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THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 


STUDIES  IN  HEGEL'S  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

With  Appendix  on  Christian  Unity  in  America 
and  the  Historic  Episcopate 


REASON  AND  AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION 

With  a  critical  review  of  Lux  Mundi  and  Dr. 
Martineau's  Seat  of  Authority  in  Religion 

THE  ETHICS  OF  HEGEL 

Translated  Selections  from  his  Rechtsphilosophie  with 
an  introductory  exposition 


THE 

FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 


ESSAYS  IN  APOLOGETICS 


BY 

J.  MACBRIDE  STERRETT,  D.D. 

The    Head  Professor  of   Philosophy   in 
The  George  Washington  University 


i^to  fork 
THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

LONDON:  MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Ltd. 
1905 

JttJ  rights  reserved 


fl)  ^oH,  ta)|)o  art  f^t  8ut|;or  of  peace  enti  lober  of 
concorS,  in  itnotolelige  of  tai|;om  istanDetl)  out  eternal 
life,  tD|)O0e  eerbice  i»  perfect  freeUom;  DefenU  ua  t|)? 
|)umiile  0erbant0  in  all  assaultjs  of  our  enemies;  t|)at 
toe,  0urelp  truotins  in  t|)p  Hefence,  map  not  fear  t|)e 
potoer  of  an?  aDberoaries,  ti)roue|)  t|)e  mie|;t  of  "^tnua 
^Ijrijst  our  fl,orti«    3men. ' 


"  Really  every  genuine  law  is  a  liberty :  it  contains 
a  reasonable  principle  of  objective  mind ;  in  other 
words  it  embodies  a  liberty."  * 

•  Collect  from  Prayer  Book. 

'  Hegel's  Philoiophie  des  Geista,  1 539. 


CoFYKicHT,  190S 
By  the  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.    Published  April,  1905 


The    Mason    Press 
Syracuse,  New  York 


srgg 


PREFACE 

These  current  discussions  of  contemporary  themes  and 
thinkers  are  Essays  in  Apologetics.  Apologetics  is  the  philo- 
sophical defense  or  justification  of  Religion.  It  aims  at  vin- 
dicating the  concrete  rationality  of  the  religious  side  of  hu- 
manity's life.  It  attempts  a  critical  refutation  of  all  antagonis- 
tic world-views.  It  meets  them  in  the  open,  on  purely  intellec- 
tual grounds,  as  to  what  is  the  most  rational  world-view — one 
that  excludes  and  invalidates  religion,  or  one  that  includes  and 
validates  it. 

The  volume  is  a  series  of  Studies,  rather  than  a  sustained 
thesis.  Yet  there  runs  through  them  all,  the  contention  that 
nature  and  man  are  known  truly,  only  when  they  are  viewed  as 
a  process  of  objective  Mind,  realizing  itself  afresh  in  and 
through  empirical  conditions. 

Its  fundamental  object  is  to  maintain  the  reasonableness  of 
a  man  of  modem  culture  frankly  and  earnestly  worshiping  in 
some  form  of  "authoritative  religion" — in  any  form,  rather  than 
in  no  form. 

Hence  the  persistent  polemic  against  the  "mechanical  view" 
of  the  universe.  This  merely  mechanical  interpretation  of  Na- 
ture and  man  and  his  institutions  is  a  metaphysical  perversion  of 
the  mechanical  theory,  properly  used  in  Science.  It  is  not  Sci- 
ence, but  the  bad  metaphysics  of  some  men  of  Science.  It  is  the 
metaphysics  of  Naturalism  and  of  rigid  mechanical  determinism, 
in  which  there  can  be  no  worthy  place  for  the  humanities. 
These  Essays  seek  a  world-view  in  which  Art  and  Religion  and 
Philosophy  are  seen  to  have  valid  functions  for  human  weal. 
The  merely  Scientific  man,  the  man  whose  world-view  is  merely 


634097 


vi  PREFACE 

that    of    mechanical    Science — the    undevout    astronomer,    or 
geologist, — is  mad.     Only  the  devout  man  is  fully  sane. 

The  use  of  the  dialectic  method  will  be  noted.  First  state- 
ments, though  put  dogmatically,  are  not  final  ones.  Criticism 
follows  to  show  their  patent  limitations,  and  thus  force  them 
into  more  concrete  forms. 

The  book  may  be  too  semi-technical  for  popular  readers,  and 
too  semi-popular  for  technical  readers.  The  odium  Theolo- 
gicum  may  sometimes  seem  to  swamp  the  philosophic  calm,  in 
the  author's  interest  in  such  verities  as  God,  Freedom  and  Im- 
mortality. The  mixture  of  metaphor  with  the  dialect  of  philoso- 
phy, and  the  appeal  to  men's  moral  and  religious  needs,  as 
against  the  regnant  naturalism  of  a  metaphysical  Science,  may 
be  faulted.  And  yet  we  dare  believe  that  there  is  a  bit  of  real 
logic  throughout  the  volume. 

Certain  truths  having  become  axioms  in  philosophy  like 
certain  principles  in  mathematics,  constantly  applied,  repeti- 
tions of  these  axiomatic  realities  had  necessarily  to  be  made 
throughout  the  book  without  adducing  constant  cross  refer- 
ences. 

The  larger  part  of  the  book  was  written  aus  einem  Gusse,  in 
a  heat,  almost  at  a  sitting,  and  must  suffer  for  the  faults  of  all 
such  composition. 

At  least  the  author  can  say,  Hberavi  animam  meam  on  some 
vital  topics  of  the  time.  He  sends  the  volume  forth  with  the 
hope  that  it  may  help  liberate  some  fellow-men  from  bondage 
to  a  godless  world-view,  and  lead  some  others  from  the  capri- 
ciousness  of  individualism,  into  that  objective  service  of  God, 
which  is  perfect  freedom. 

He  has  to  thank  his  colleague.  Professor  Hermann  Schon- 
feld  for  his  valuable  assistance  in  reading  and  correcting  the 
final  proof  of  the  whole  volume. 

J.  Macbride  Sterrett. 
The  George  Washington  University, 

Washington,  D.  C,  January,  igos. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  I 
The  Freedom  of  Authority i 

CHAPTER  H 
Sabatier,  Harnack  and  Loisy 45 

CHAPTER  in 
Abbe  Loisy 107 

CHAPTER  IV 

The  Historical  Method 157 

(a)  Scientific. 
{b)  Philosophical. 

CHAPTER  V 
Ecclesiastical  Impedimenta 218 

CHAPTER  VI 
Ethics  of  Creed  Conformity 234 

CHAPTER  VII 

The  Ground  of  Certitude  in  Religion 

Reason  and  Authority  in  Religion 240 

Psychological  Forms  of  Religion 264 

CHAPTER  VIII 

Ultimate  Ground  of  Authority 289 

Appendix— Notes 303 

vii 


'f. 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

"Whoso  would  be  a  man  must  be  a  non-conformist."  This 
dictum  of  Emerson  in  his  Sturm  und  Drang  period  cannot  be 
taken  seriously.  Taken  literally  in  England,  it  would  mean  the 
exclusion  of  King,  Archbishops,  the  clergy  and  the  laity  of  the 
Church  of  England  from  the  category  of  manhood.  Taken 
seriously  anywheres,  it  would  mean  the  denial  of  manhood  to 
all  men  of  good  manners.  The  good-mannered  man  is  the  one 
who  conforms  to  the  manners,  or  morals  (mores,  yjOiKo., 
Sitten)  of  his  tribe,  set,  community,  station  and  institutions. 

It  would  mean  that  one  must  decivilize,  desocialize  himself 
— fanatically  attempt  not  to  be  like  other  men.  My  set,  people, 
church  believe  and  behave  so  and  so.  I  must  behave  unlike 
them  and  thus  finally  ostracise  myself  from  all  relations  to  my 
fellow  men  in  order  to  be  a  man.  My  good  fellow  citizens  obey 
the  laws,  I  must  be  an  anti-nomian.  My  church  believes  in  the 
Apostles'  Creed  and  has  a  prescribed  form  of  worship.  I  must 
deny  the  creed  and  decry  the  cult.  I  must  be  a  veritable  Ish- 
maelite  and  heed  "the  call  of  the  wild"  against  "the  call  of  the 
tame." 

But  what  quality  of  manhood  remains  in  one  as  a  non- 
conformist? "No  tribe,  nor  state,  nor  home  hath  he."  Self- 
schismed  from  all  of  his  kind  by  his  un-kindness ;  unformed  by 
all  his  non-conformity,  he  must  be  as  Aristotle  said,  "either  a 
beast  or  a  god."  He  would  be  even  less  than  a  beast.  For 
beasts  are  like  their  kind,  conform  to  their  type,  physically  and 

I  I 


2  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

psychically.  "Insist  on  yourself,  never  imitate,"  says  Emer- 
son again  in  his  essay  on  Self-reliance.  And  again,  "I  hope  in 
these  days  we  have  heard  the  last  of  conformity  and  consist- 
ency. Let  the  words  be  gazetted  and  ridiculous  hencefor- 
ward." Emerson  must  have  meant  that  the  perfect  man  should 
be  a  non-conformist  to  the  manners  of  imperfect  men.  A  Jesus 
must  not  conform  to  the  creeds  and  deeds  of  the  Pharisees  and 
Sadducees — hypocrites.  This  is  evident  from  the  transcen- 
dental lines  prefixed  to  a  previous  essay : — 

"  I  am  the  owner  of  the  spheres, 
Of  the  seven  stars  and  the  solar  year, 
Of  Caesar's  hand  and  Plato's  brain, 
Of  Lord  Christ's  heart  and  Shakspere's  strain." 

Such  a  cosmopolitan  man  is  more  like  a  god.  Such  an  un- 
common man  may  stand,  as  he  further  says,  before  every  cus- 
tom and  law  and  say:  "Under  this  mask  did  my  Proteus 
nature  hide  itself."  I  am  the  universal-human.  N^ihil  humani 
alienum  a  me  puto  and  so  I  am  a  man  because  I  am  a  conform- 
ist. I  can  only  be  a  non-conformist  to  imperfect  forms,  because 
I  have  been  conformed  to  those  of  the  universal-human.  I,  as  a 
cosmopolitan,  may  slight  provincial  customs.  But  I  have  be- 
come a  cosmopolite  by  being  a  conformist  to  the  manners  of 
all  provinces.  I  can  be  a  non-conformist  only  after  and  because 
I  have  become  a  conformed-ist.  I  have,  Emerson  virtually 
says,  conformed  to  the  type  of  perfect  manhood  and  therefore 
I  can  non-conform  to  imperfect  forms  of  the  type.  "The 
oversoul"  is  my  soul.  In  me  is  a  greater  than  me,  that  is,  my 
real  me.  It  is  God  that  is  my  real  self,  and  God  cannot  be  con- 
formed to  anything  but  Himself.  Thus  Emerson's  non-con- 
formist turns  out  to  be  a  god,  rather  than  a  beast.  What  he 
means,  if  anything  more  than  a  striking  expression  is  intended, 
is  that  the  man  who  has  become  a  real  man  by  conformity  to  the 
perfect  law  of  the  universal-human,  must  non-conform  to  the 
manners,  customs,  morals  of  the  imperfect  human.    In  other 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY  3 

words  he  meant  to  say  that :     Whoso  would  be  a  man  must  be 
a  conformist.^ 

So  says  biology  in  its  law  of  conformity  to  type.  So  says 
psychology,  pedagogy,  morality,  religion  and  philosophy.  So, 
too,  says  history.  No  form  of  organized  society — from  the 
tribal  to  the  republican,  from  the  lowest  to  the  highest  form  of 
social,  moral  or  religious  society  has  any  place  for  the  mug- 
wump, or  non-conformist.  Ostracism  is  always  the  penalty. 
The  non-conformist  is  always  at  most  a  re-formist.  He  can  be 
a  non-conformist  only  because  he  has  been  transformed  to  some 
other  form.  Non-conformity  is  thus  often  the  highest  type  of 
moral  and  religious  conformity.  The  non-conformists  of  Eng- 
land have  had  their  moral  nobility  only  by  virtue  of  their  con- 
formity to  a  higher  type  of  Christianity  than  that  which  they 
found  about  them. 

It  was  the  moral  and  religious  imperfection  of  the  Church 
of  England  that  made  their  non-conformity  possible  because  of 
their  conformity  to  higher  religious  ideals.  Yes,  it  is  often 
true  that  to  be  a  man — a  typical  man — one  must  often  be  a 
non-conformist  to  the  customs  of  degenerates.  Degenerates 
means,  in  fact,  those  who  have  lost  the  qualities  proper  to  the 
genus  or  kind  of  mankind. 

Isolate  the  child  of  cultured  parents  from  all  human  inter- 
course. Let  him  be  a  private,  subjective,  uneducated  potential 
man.  You  cannot  take  away  from  him  the  heredity  that  enters 
into  his  idiosyncrasy.  But  he  is  as  nearly  as  possible  unspoilt 
by  the  tyrants  of  domestic,  religious,  intellectual  and  moral 
authorities.  No  mother-tongue  tyrannizes  his  speech  —  if 
speech  he  have.  He  is  a  private  individual  so  far  as  that  is 
possible.  Let  him  then  be  cast  into  the  desert,  away  from  the 
shackles  of  civilization.  Let  him  be  nurtured  by  a  wolf.  An- 
thropomorphize his  animal  companions  as  much  as  Kipling  or 

*Thus  Emerson  in  speaking  of  the  true  scholar  says,  "the  truth  is  this : 
Every  man  I  meet  is  my  master  in  some  point,  and  in  that  I  learn  of 
him." 


4  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

Seton  Thompson  do.  Let  him  be  a  Mogli.  Still,  "persistence 
of  type"  will  keep  him  enough  conformed  to  the  human,  to  pre- 
vent his  becoming  wholly  a  beast,  while  his  conformity  to  his 
bestial  environment  will  keep  him  from  becoming  much  of  a 
man. 

By  patent  analysis  every  avowed  non-conformist  can  be 
shown  to  be  nine-tenths  a  conformedist.  Heredity  and  envi- 
ronment have  done  their  ineffaceable  work  upon  him.  He  is 
full  of  prejudices — pre-judgments  of  ancestors  and  fellowmen. 

An  unprejudiced  judgment  is  a  psychological  impossibility. 
It  is  only  important  that  one's  pre-judgments  be  good  and  true, 
normal  and  objective,  rather  than  whimsical,  peculiar,  abnormal 
and  subjective. 

But  if  his  judgments  are  so  largely  pre-judgments,  pre- 
judices imbibed  from  ancestry  and  his  social,  ethical  environ- 
ments, where  is  his  distinctively  private  judgment?  Where 
is  what  is  termed  his  individuality? 

Analysis  shows  this  to  be  largely  an  idiosyncrasy,  a  peculiar 
blending  of  hereditary  and  environing  traits.  He  never  was  an 
individual  in  the  abstract  sense,  i.  e.,  as  being  abstracted  from 
all  such  determining  elements.  He  was  not  so  when  first  ab- 
stracted from  his  mother's  womb.  Then  the  mother's  love  and 
the  family  ethos  bathed  and  permeated,  and  together  with  the 
ethos  of  society,  church  and  school  made  him  a  man  among 
men.  Hence  his  private  judgment  is  always  based  upon  ob- 
jective, social  judgments.  Otherwise  the  right  of  private 
judgment  becomes  the  wrong  of  mis  judgment  to  society,  which 
punishes  him  accordingly,  and  a  wrong  to  his  own  human 
nature  which  is  self-retributive.  In  all  this,  too,  he  had  been 
and  still  is  under  authority.  Conformity  and  authority  are  cor- 
relatives. 

And  here  we  have  another  bug-bear  term — authority.  The 
freedom  of  authority  is  an  antinomy,  and  an  unresolved  antin- 
omy is  an  insult  to  reason.  The  human  spirit  will  not  brook 
it.     Where  it  cannot  solve  the  antinomy  by  rising  to  a  higher 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY  5 

point  of  view,  it  will  make  a  practical  solution — will  cut  the 
Gordian  knot. 

To  speak  of  the  freedom  of  authority  may  seem  to  some  like 
discoursing  on  the  whiteness  of  blackness.  Kant's  statement  of 
some  antinomies  is  classical.  He  denied  the  possibility  of  any 
rational  solution  of  them.  His  critical  solution  of  them  left  us 
with  the  unresolved  dualism  between  phenomena  and  noumena. 
Later  philosophy  multiplies  the  antinomies — finds  that  in  every 
object  or  idea  there  is  difference  as  well  as  identity.  All  that  is 
needed  to  make  an  antinomy  is  to  emphasize  the  difference  and 
neglect  the  identity.  To  solve,  it  is  to  see  the  unity  in  and 
through  the  difference,  as  is  done  in  Burns'  line  "A  man's  a  man 
for  a'  that."  To  make  a  bug-bear  of  authority,  as  fatal  to  free- 
dom, seems  like  a  belated  survival  of  a  worked-out  and  thought- 
out  antinomy.  The  scientific,  historical  and  philosophical  spirit 
and  methods  are  all  beyond  the  abstractions  on  which  this 
antinomy  is  founded.  And  yet  it  lingers  on  jn  robust  form — an 
encysted,  but  lively  corpse  in  the  cosmic  thought  of  the 
twentieth  century.  In  no  spheres  of  life  is  this  survival  more 
pronounced  in  our  day  than  in  those  of  morals  and  religion. 
Napoleon  remarked  to  Laplace  that  he  could  not  find  any  men- 
tion of  the  Creator  in  his  Mechanique  Celeste.  "Sire,"  said 
Laplace,  "I  had  no  need  of  any  such  hypothesis."  So  say  some 
of  authority  in  morals  and  religion — "Sirs,  there  is  no  need  of 
that  hypothesis  in  describing  true  religion." 

The  author  of  one  of  the  most  significant  and  brilliant  works 
on  religion^  quotes  approvingly  the  tempestuous  claim  of  Vinet, 
whom  he  styles  the  great  prophet  of  the  religion  of  the  spirit  in 
our  age  and  country:  "That  which  I  absolutely  repudiate  is 
authority,"  and  adds,  "the  time  has  come,  it  seems  to  me,  for 
those  who  have  broken  with  authority  in  their  inner  life,  to  break 
definitely  with  it  in  their  theology." 

But  we  are  told  that  the  right  of  private  judgment  was  the 

^Auguste  Sabatier,  Religions  of  Authority  and  the  Religion  of  the 
Spirit,  p.  283. 


6  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

essential  characteristic  of  the  Reformation,  and  that  this  meant 
the  repudiation  of  all  authority  in  religion.  It  need  scarcely  be 
said  that  this  has  not  been  true  of  Protestantism,  except  in  that 
of  some  who  have  departed  far  from  its  substantial  principles 
and  historical  forms.  Such  writers  demand  a  suspense  of  judg- 
ment in  religious  matters  till  they  can  be  approached  simply  as 
an  unbiased  intellectual  study.  To  do  this  they  should  be  kept 
from  all  authoritative  religious  education,  as  John  Stuart  Mill 
was  by  his  father. 

Authority  may  be  defined  as  the  power  or  influence  through 
which  one  does  or  believes  what  he  would  not  of  his  own 
unaided  powers.  Authorities  are  all  presumably  rightful. 
That  lies  in  the  very  significance  of  the  term.  It  is  a  personal 
relation  between  the  wiser  and  better  and  those  less  wise  and 
good.  Society's  judgment  as  to  who  are  the  wisest  and  best  is 
expressed  in  the  form  of  laws.  Laws  are  authorized.  The 
personal  is  never  wholly  absent  from  any  form  of  authority. 
Its  function  is  to  enable  individuals  to  attain  a  higher  develop- 
ment than  they  could  by  their  own  unaided  powers.  This 
mediation  is  primarily  through  the  collective  reason  and  beliefs 
and  customs  of  mankind  and  the  individuals.  Ultimately  all 
authority  must  be  seen  to  be  invested  in  God,  "whose  service 
is  perfect  freedom."  Speaking  of  it  mediately,  it  is  the  power 
or  influence  conferred  by  wisdom,  character,  office  and  station. 
Its  fundamental  idea  is  that  of  law.  Law  is  a  rule  of  conduct 
to  an  end.  That  end  is  always  the  well  being  of  those  upon 
whom  it  is  imposed.  Primarily  objective,  its  aim  is  to  make 
itself  subjective  in  its  subjects,  so  that  it  may  be  seen  to  be  their 
own  law — the  law  of  their  own  nature.  But  it  becomes  to  one  a 
law  of  his  own  nature  through  custom  and  conformity — the 
law  of  his  educated  nature — his  nature  converted  into  sub- 
stantial manhood  through  conformity  to  the  authorities  which 
surround  him  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave.  Thus  authority  is 
the  right  of  the  species  man  over  its  individuals;  and  con- 
formity is  a  duty  of  the  individual  to  his  set.     It  is  this  con- 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY  7 

formity  that  makes  him  a  generic  man.  And  thus  it  becomes 
his  right,  his  good,  the  means  of  his  being  elevated  to  the  grade 
of  manhood. 

Authority  has  its  roots  in  the  organic  conditions  of  all  forms 
of  life  and  of  good  living.  It  is  the  pedagogue  to  whom  all 
must  always  go  to  school.  It  is  a  necessary  function  of  the 
species  for  its  own  preservation.  As  tradition,  it  is  the  bond 
of  generations  transmitting  the  accumulated  heritage  of  the 
ages.  Every  form  of  society  naturally  and  necessarily  begets 
generic  traditions,  customs,  beliefs,  constitutions  and  by-laws 
which  are  authoritative  for  all  its  members.  The  society 
which  is  without  them  cannot  remain  a  society.  That  which 
has  no  such  organic  past  can  have  no  continuing  present. 
"Institutions,"  it  has  been  said,  "are  the  lengthening  shadow 
of  man."  That  is  too  feeble  a  simile.  Say,  rather,  institutions 
are  the  lengthening  and  strengthening  of  the  stature  of  man. 
Civilized  men  are  civilized  men  only  through  institutions.  Man 
is  by  nature — that  is,  by  his  educated  nature — an  institutional 
being,  or  as  Aristotle  said,  "a.  political  animal."  And  generic 
constitutions  always  imply  authority,  conformity  and,  through 
these,  real  concrete  freedom  or  self-realization.  Law,  authority 
is  fundamental  and  final  and  freedom  is  in  and  by  means  of  law. 

But  authority  for  man  is  always  ultimately  personal,  and  its 
aim  is  to  enrich  individuals  by  fulfilling  them.  Being  personal 
it  implies  trust,  confidence  and  obedience.  Its  function  is  its 
sufficient  credential.  It  educates  and  sustains  individuals.  The 
individual  cannot  become  a  man  except  by  conformity,  as  "the 
branch  cannot  bear  fruit  except  it  abide  in  the  vine"  as  a  mem- 
ber. So  we  return  to  conformity  as  the  necessary  means  of 
self-development.  Authorities  may  sometimes  seem  external 
and  obedience  forced,  but  all  education  goes  on  under  these 
principles.  "One  is  always  somebody's  child."  The  man  not 
less  than  the  child  and  the  race  not  less  than  man  is  always 
under  authorities,  which  can  be  traced  to  the  One  Supreme 
personal  authority  "whose  service  is  perfect  freedom."    Educa- 


8  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

tion  is  the  influencing  of  person  by  person,  to  the  end  of  the 
self-realization  of  the  one  influenced.  It  is  the  shaping  of  the 
individual  to  his  civilized  environment,  so  that  rational  habits 
and  views — ^that  is,  the  views  and  habits  of  his  institutions,  may 
take  the  place  of  mere  caprice.  It  is  erroneous  to  say  that 
"education  is  the  development  of  the  theoretical  and  practical 
in  the  individual,"  as  if  it  were  only  an  educing  of  what  is 
already  within,  like  shelling  so  many  peas  from  a  pod.  Educa- 
tion is  not  merely  an  exegesis.  It  is  rather  an  induction — a  con- 
veying a  fullness  into  an  emptiness.  It  is  a  conversion,  a  regen- 
eration of  the  merely  natural  man  of  babyhood.  Apart  from 
heredity  and  idiosyncrasy,  if  there  is  anything  peculiar,  it  is  bad 
tin-kind,  and  needs  extirpation  rather  than  education,  for  the 
good  of  the  individual  and  society.  The  child,  as  Hegel  says, 
"as  a  potential  man  is  only  subjective  or  negative."  His  first 
nature  must  be  converted  into  a  second  rational  ethical  nature, 
so  that  these  become  his  second  and  true  nature.  Pedagogy  is 
the  art  of  making  man  ethical.  It  seeks  to  permeate  him  with 
the  ethos,  intellectual,  moral  and  religious  of  his  people.  To  a 
father  seeking  the  best  way  to  bring  up  his  son,  a  Pythagorean, 
or  some  other  philosopher,  replied,  "make  him  a  citizen  of  a 
state  which  has  good  laws."  And  by  the  state,  Aristotle  and 
Hegel  mean  the  whole  social  organism — family,  school,  church, 
society,  as  well  as  government.  Let  him  conform  to  these  in- 
stitutional authorities  if  he  would  become  a  good  and  wise  man. 
Let  him  conform  his  vocalization  to  the  common  language;  his 
reasoning  to  the  common  laws  of  thought ;  his  knowledge  to  the 
common  fund  of  science,  art,  literature  and  philosophy ;  his  de- 
votional exercises  to  the  common  cult  of  his  church,  and  his 
conduct  to  the  ethical  codes,  customs  and  manners  of  his 
people,  that  he  may  attain  to  the  stature  of  manhood. 

The  imperishable  Greek  ideal  of  education  was  not  merely 
that  of  drawing  out  but  also  that  of  a  putting  in.  And  it  was 
to  be  put  in  by  line  upon  line  and  precept  upon  precept  and 
example  upon  example,  and  custom  upon  custom — that  is,  as 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY  9 

Aristotle  taught,  by  habituation  to  the  objective,  generic,  and 
concrete  wisdom  and  morals  of  the  institution.  During  the 
process  there  is  thus  a  species  of  self-enstrangement  for  the 
natural — the  uneducated  man,  but  its  end  is  self-realization  or 
the  cultured  moral  man.  All  knowledge,  all  manners  are  for- 
eign to  the  child.  But  familiarity  with  them  removes  their  for- 
eign air,  and  they  become  flesh  of  his  flesh  and  spirit  of  his  spirit 
— a  second,  regenerated  nature.  And  as  the  process  never 
ceases  but  with  senility  or  death,  one's  regeneration  is  never 
quite  completed.  Literal  school  days  do  not  end  the  conformity 
that  educates.  "One  is  always  somebody's  child."  The  wis- 
dom and  experience  of  his  fellowmen  and  of  the  institutions  of 
which  he  is  a  member  are  always  objective  concrete  authorities. 
Without  me  there  is  always  a  greater  than  me,  unless  I  have 
with  Emerson  become  the  owner  of  "Lord  Christ's  heart  and 
Shakespere's  strain,"  and  the  "over  soul"  has  become  my  own 
soul.  Not  till  then  will  the  right  of  the  distinctively,  peculiar 
private  judgment  be  aught  but  mis- judgment.  And  in  the 
process  one's  judgment  is  of  worth  only  so  far  as  it  conforms  to 
public  universal  judgment,  intellectual  or  moral.  And  when  it 
is  right  and  good,  it  is  so  in  virtue  of  its  not  being  one's  private 
judgment.  The  Lehrjahre  always  run  through  the  Wander- 
jahre  and  even  the  Meisterjahre  are  years  of  Lehrjahre.  Edu- 
cation is  unending  for  the  living  man  and  it  is  always  under 
authorities. 

But  what  place,  we  ask  again,  is  left  for  freedom  and 
individuality?  Let  us  say  briefly,  and  then  try  to  see  later  on 
that  in  this  process  of  education,  freedom  and  individuality  are 
being  truly  realized. 

We  note  the  strange  tendency  of  man  to  think  in  transcended 
forms  of  thought — to  stand  on  overcome-standpoints.  Men 
grow  zealous  and  fight  for  old  gods  when  they  have  thought 
themselves  to  new  and  higher  ones.  It  is  a  species  of  intel- 
lectual and  moral  atavism.  It  is  a  recrudescence  of  the  old 
Adam,  which  is  often  too  strong  for  the  new  Adam  in  us, — to 


10  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

put  it  in  religious  way.  Men  of  science  who  hold  the  strictly 
mechanical  view  of  the  universe,  will  often  argue  in  terms  of 
tetology  and  freedom.  Or  having  passed  beyond  crude  mate- 
rialism to  the  higher  category  of  force  as  a  system  of  forces,  they 
will  argue  from  the  standpoint  of  matter  as  the  ultimately  real. 
Or  having  accepted  evolution,  they  will  argue  as  if  there  were 
no  teleologv.  Life  is  still  a  higher  category  and  yet  they  will 
often  subordinate  life  to  conceptions  of  the  inorganic.  Illustra- 
tions in  morals  and  religion  also  are  abundant.  Men,  like  the 
Jews  of  old,  believe  in  and  fear  Jehovah  and  yet  worship  their 
old  idols.  In  religion,  the  Methodists  call  it  back-sliding.  In 
thought  and  action  it  is  inconsistency. 

There  is  a  whole  nestful  of  eighteenth  century  conceptions 
— conceptions  of  the  Eclair cissement,  Aiifkl'drung  or  rational- 
ism, that  have  lived  and  fought  through  the  nineteenth  century, 
in  spite  of  the  accepted,  historical  method  and  the  regnant  con- 
ception of  evolution.  These  are  the  abstract  conceptions  of 
reason,  freedom,  individuality  and  a  generally  static  view  of 
all  things  as  separate  and  distinct,  the  universe  being  a  collection 
of  independent  beings  and  things  with  no  essential  relations 
between  them.  In  all  human  organizations  the  individual  is 
the  real.  And  the  individual  is  an  independent  atom,  impervious 
to  foreign  emigrations,  a  substantial  unit,  a  microcosmic 
monad.  These  monads,  as  Leibnitz  said,  "have  no  windows 
through  which  anything  might  go  in  or  out  of  them."  No 
sponging  is  therefore  possible  or  desirable.  Each  one  being  like 
a  separate  world,  is  "sufficient  for  itself,  independent  of  every 
other  creature,  enveloping  the  infinite,  expressing  the  universe 
and  as  durable,  self-subsistent  and  absolute  as  the  universe 
itself."  This  pluralistic  view  of  the  universe  as  a  collection  of 
many  eternal  and  independent  beings  has  its  revival  in  the  views 
of  Professor  James,  Professor  Howison,  Professor  Schiller  and 
the  authors  of  the  volume  of  essays  entitled  "Personal  Ideal- 
ism." This  eighteenth  century  view  was  practically  a  revival  of 
nominalism  against  a  second  growth  of  realism  in  thought  and 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY  ii 

institution.  It  was  the  principle  of  criticism  used  against  all 
constituted  authorities.  The  illuminated,  enfranchised  indi- 
vidual was  in  duty  bound  to  summon  before  his  private  tribunal 
for  evaluation  all  the  accepted  creeds,  cults  and  institutions. 
The  German  name  for  this  age  is  the  Aufkldrung — the  clearing 
up,  which  Schelling  happily  characterized  as  an  Auskldrung — a 
clearing  out.^ 

Cut  bono  it  asked  of  church  and  state  and  art  and  religion 
and  every  form  of  social  organization.  Does  it,  judged  by  the 
private  reason  of  the  private  person,  pay  to  belong  to,  to  submit 
to  any  of  these  so  called  authorities?  If  not,  then  away  with 
them  from  my  universe.  All  organic  unities — family,  state, 
church,  were  looked  upon  as  unities  only  in  the  sense  of  being 
collections  or  aggregations  of  independent  individuals,  formed 
by  social  contact  for  the  enlarged  happiness  or  the  individual 
members.  Never  was  there  an  age  which  was  so  sure  that  it 
had  reached  the  ultimate  point  of  view.  The  ofttimes  arrogancy 
of  the  modern  scientific  view  of  the  world  pales  before  that  of  the 
Illumination.  Reason  was  late  born,  but  it  had  finally  been 
born,  full-fledged  in  their  day  and  would  henceforth  rule  the 
world.  After  us  the  deluge,  was  the  cry.  Each  man  was  to  be 
his  own  Moses  and  his  own  Christ.  The  Sinai  was  within  and 
the  Golgotha  too,  so  far  as  any  need  of  a  cross  was  recognized. 
"Thus  would  /  speak,  if  I  were  Christ,"  are  the  words  that 
Goethe  put  into  the  mouths  of  one  of  these  rationalists,  in  char- 
acterizing the  arrogant  self-conceit  of  this  phase  of  thought. 

Thus  measured,  all  institutions  of  civilized  life  were  found 
wanting,  and  so  Rousseau  made  his  "call  to  the  wild"  from  the 
call  of  the  tame — "Back  from  civilization  and  artificiality  to  na- 
ture and  the  freedom  of  the  woodland."  In  a  word  it  was  the 
assertion  of  the  infinitude  of  the  finite  self — the  deification  of  the 
individual  as  in  modern  pluralism.  Some  of  the  representatives 
of  the  modern  form  of  this  individualistic  polytheism  seem  to  be 
jealous  of  God — would  fain  banish  Him,  or  reduce  Him  to  being 

^  Cf.  my  Ethics  of  Hegel,    p.  20,  for  further  characterization. 


12  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

at  most  primus  inter  pares,  lest  He  should  tamper  with  the 
sacred  rights  of  individuals.  These  are,  by  nature,  as  eternal 
and  independent  as  God  Himself.     All  are  gods. 

In  the  eighteenth  century  form,  freedom  from  all  forms  of 
social  and  institutional  authorities  was  proclaimed.  The  evils 
of  man  were  held  to  be  due  to  society.  The  individual  could 
only  reach  perfection  by  being  freed  from  all  restraint  and  al- 
lowed to  follow  his  own  natural  instincts.  All  relations  between 
individuals  were  looked  upon  as  artificial,  made  by  compact,  and 
in  no  way  constitutive  of  them.  Hence  dissent  became  the  rule 
and  conformity  the  exception. 

It  may  be  well,  at  this  point,  to  differentiate  the  principles  of 
this  "Age  of  Reason"  from  those  of  Protestantism,  inasmuch  as 
many  falsely  identify  them.  It  is  possible  indeed  for  Sabatier 
to  style  himself  a  Protestant,^  after  he  has  given  much  space  to 
show  that  historically  Protestantism,  at  least  up  till  his  day  and 
to  a  few  choice  liberal  souls,  has  always  had  its  authoritative 
standards  for  its  individual  members.  Indeed  in  his  second 
work,^  he  classifies  Protestantism  along  with  Romanism  under 
"Religions  of  Authority"  and  gives  a  most  drastic  criticism  of 
historical  Protestantism  which  is  only  equalled  by  that  of  Dr. 
Martineau.^  Both  of  these  writers  err  in  holding  that  Protes- 
tants placed  authority  in  a  paper-pope,  as  the  Bible  has  been 
stigmatized,  and  not  recognizing  too,  that,  historically,  Protes- 
tants have  also  placed  authority  in  their  churches.  They  have 
all,  always  and  everywheres,  held  to  the  Apostles'  Creed,  with  its 
article,  "I  believe  in  the  holy  Catholic  Church." 

But  for  the  point  at  issue — the  right  of  the  private  judgment 
of  the  individual.  Protestants  have  always  claimed  the  right  of 
personal  conviction,  but  also  that  the  right  of  private  judgment 
is  the  right  of  judgment  based  upon  the  Scriptures  and  creeds 
of  the  church — upon  the  testimony  of  the  Spirit  as  authorita- 

^  Sabatier's  Outlines  of  a  Philosophy  of  Religion,  p.  222. 

*  Sabatier's  Religions  of  Authority  and  the  Religion  of  the  Spirit. 

*  Martineau's  Seat  of  Authority  in  Religion. 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY  13 

tively  communicated  to  the  individual,  not  by  a  paper-pope,  but 
by  holy  and  inspired  men  and  writers  and  most  fully  by  the  per- 
sonal Christ.  Throughout,  too,  they  had  the  conception  of  a 
kingdom  of  whose  principles  these  persons  were  the  authorita- 
tive exponents.  Historically — ^that  is — as  a  matter  of  fact,  the 
fundamental  doctrines  of  Protestants  have  been : 

( 1 )  The  will  of  God  revealed  through  the  divine  institutions 
and  inspired  men  of  holy  Scriptures,  as  the  authoritative  rule  of 
faith  and  practice. 

(2)  Justification  by  faith  alone,  through  the  divine  grace, 
mediated  by  the  Holy  Scriptures  and  the  Christian  community. 

(3)  The  universal  priesthood  of  believers. 
Protestanism  never  contended  for,  nor  allowed  the  right  of 

mere  private  judgment  in  any  of  its  churches.  It  has  insisted 
upon  personal  conviction.  It  has  asserted  the  supreme  value — 
not  of  the  individual,  but  of  the  Christlike  person.  It  has  always 
condemned  to  final  punishment,  in  terms  lurid  or  gentle,  sensu- 
ous or  spiritual,  according  to  the  prevailing  culture  of  the  times 
— all  individuals  whose  private  judgment  and  life  were  not  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  Word  of  God.  The  absolute  value  of  the  in- 
dividual in  hell — make  that  as  unsensuous  as  you  please — is  not 
an  absolute  value  of  any  worth.  It  means  alienation  from  the 
Kingdom  of  God,  the  Church  triumphant.  That  is,  it  is  the  kind 
of  an  individual  that  has  worth — the  individual  that  has  been 
realized  as  a  member  of  the  Kingdom.  It  is  true  that  some  self- 
styled  liberal  Christians  in  a  number  of  our  churches  think  and 
act  under  the  principles  of  "the  age  of  reason,"  and  talk  to  their 
flock  about  the  liberty  of  every  man's  thinking  as  he  pleases 
about  the  doctrines  of  their  respective  churches.  The  epithet 
liberal  is  not  modest.  And  their  talk  about  "a.  religion  for  this 
age,"  or  "the  Church  of  the  future"  for  which  they  stand,  does 
not  make  for  the  edifying  of  the  religious  nature  of  men,  as  it  is 
generally  intellectual  rather  than  devotional.  They  represent 
only  eddies  in  the  great  stream  of  the  life  of  their  churches. 
Protestants  protested  against  the  abuses  and  corruptions  of 


14  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

the  Church — protested  against  the  decision  of  the  Diet  of  Spires 
(a.  d.  1529)  when  that  Diet  refused  to  reform  these  abuses  and 
corruptions — and,  historically  speaking — the  day  for  this  pro- 
test is  not  yet  over.  Otherwise  there  is  no  reason  against 
reunion  with  Rome.  Certainly  a  reunited  Christendom  is  the 
ideal  Church  of  the  future.  But  until  Rome  heeds  the  protest, 
it  is  difficult  to  hear  with  patience  the  voices  of  those  in  the 
Protestant  Episcopal  Church,  who  decry  "the  mistake  of  the 
Reformation"  and  "the  failure  of  Protestantism,"  and  labor  for 
the  expurgation  of  the  word  "Protestant"  from  the  title  of  their 
Church^. 

It  were  vain  to  use  words  to  tell  of  the  ethical  might  of 
Protestantism.  I  only  ask  that  its  principles  be  not  confused 
with  the  subjective,  negative  ones  of  "the  Age  of  Reason." 
There  no  authoritative  institutions  were  recognized.  Hence 
they  could  and  should  be  dissolved  at  the  private  conviction  of 
any  member  of  them.  Dissent  became  the  rule,  conformity  the 
exception. 

Before  the  bar  of  the  abstract  reason  of  the  individual — a 
sum  total  of  clear  and  fixed  notions,  unenlightened  by  tra- 
ditional and  current  codes  and  customs,  all  institutions  of  hu- 
manity were  summoned  for  trial,  and  all  the  holy  and  tender  web 
of  human  affections  and  will  were  ignored.  The  growth  of 
ideas,  ideals  and  institutions  was  not  recognized  as  the  slow 
work  of  concrete  reason  in  tha  race  and,  through  this,  in  the 
individuals  supposed  to  be  private. 

To-day  organisms,  creeds  and  concepts  are  regarded  as  evo- 
lutions of  corporate  humanity.  The  mental  and  moral  con- 
cepts are  looked  upon  as  developments  of  the  impulse  towards 
rationality,  done  into  men  through  history.  That  age  and  its 
abstract  conception  of  reason  is  now  the  common  object  of  criti- 
cism by  men  of  science,  art  and  literature  as  well  as  by  moralists 
and  ecclesiasts.     Its  philosophical  quietus  was  given  nearly  at 

^Appendix,  note  i. 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY  IS 

the  time  of  its  origin  in  the  utter  intellectual  scepticism  of 
Hume.  Its  practical  issue  came  in  the  "reign  of  terror"  in  the 
French  Revolution. 

Within  the  limits  of  all  the  different  schools  of  the  enlight- 
enment— the  prosy  scholastic  English  Deism,  the  fiery,  vindictive 
spirit  and  materialistic  tone  of  the  French  Eclair cissement,  and 
the  idealistic  form  of  the  German  Aufkldrung,  there  is  found 
the  same  fundamental  view  of  supremacy  of  the  individual. 
The  Common  Creed  v^^as  :  I  believe  that  I  as  an  individual  am 
the  sole  judge  of  what  is  good  and  true.  I  believe  that  "man 
(the  individual)  is  born  free,  and  everywhere  he  is  in  chains."^ 
I  believe  that  the  individual  should  resume  his  natural  independ- 
ence— that  all  men  are,  by  nature,  free  and  equal.  Priest-craft 
has  forged  the  chains  of  an  enslaving  Church,  state-craft  those 
of  governments,  custom  those  of  the  family,  and  systems  of 
thought  those  of  theology  and  philosophy.  I  must  assert  my 
independence  of  all  the  vested  rights  of  these  tyrannies.  Recog- 
nizing no  organic  connection  of  the  individual  with  the  past  life 
of  his  people ;  denying  the  historic  conditions  which  had  shaped 
his  own  opinions ;  lacking  wholly  the  historical  spirit  and 
method,  he  continually  asserted — I  believe  that  the  individual 
should  be  raised  out  of  all  these  tyrannies  into  a  position  of 
supremacy  over  everything.  Hitherto  man  has  been  in  his 
nonage.  O  blessed  time  that  was  born  for  the  individual  to  re- 
sume his  natural  freedom  and  rightful  supremacy — NuUiits  ad- 
dictus  jurare  in  verba  magistri. 

It  is  needless  to  trace  the  wide  divergence  in  the  thought  and 
practice  within  this  sophistic  and  nominalistic  phase  of  thought. 
Any  history  of  philosophy  will  give  the  details — Erdmann's 
probably  the  best.  So  too  any  history  of  the  political,  literary, 
social  and  ethical  movements  of  that  period  in  the  different  coun- 
tries where  it  prevailed,  will  fill  out  this  barest  of  outlines,  and 
show  the  historic  worth  and  the  practical  and  intellectual  limita- 
tions and  the  final  negativity  of  the  whole  movement. 

^  Rousseau,  The  Social  Contract,  Bk.  I,  ch.  I,  p.  I. 


l6  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

The  function  and  worth  of  this  movement  should,  of  course, 
not  be  treated  in  a  merely  negative  way.  Both  the  historical 
and  philosophical  methods  demand  recognition  of  the  function 
of  non-conformity  in  all  its  forms.  To  put  it  in  a  phrase,  it  is 
the  function  of  the  negative  in  the  pulse  beat  of  life  and  thought 
-*f-in  the  process  of  man's  progress  into  rational  freedom.  It  is 
a  phase  of  reason  both  practical  and  speculative.  Both  are 
activities,  always  on  the  move ;  always  changing  and  transform- 
ing themselves ;  always  differentiating  attained  results  and  then 
going  on  to  organize  their  differentiations  into  unity  with  the 
old — a  perpetual  play  of  identity  and  difference  into  a  higher 
unity.  Life  is,  to  modify  Spencer's  formula,  a  continuous, 
though  often  apparently  per  saltum  change  from  definite  homo- 
geneity, through  heterogeneity  and  differentiations,  to  more 
complex  forms  of  homogeneity.  Each  age  makes  institutions, 
as  embodying  its  practical  reason.  It  does  its  creed  into  life, 
before  it  formulates  it  into  thought.  But  nothing  finite  is  per- 
fect. That  is  a  platitude.  But  it  is  at  the  bottom  of  all  criti- 
cism and  of  all  progress.  Each  institution  takes  itself  seriously 
as  final.  The  world  spirit  denies  this.  It  finds  imperfection  of 
function  as  new  environment  occurs.  It  becomes  iconoclastic. 
But  back  of  all  forms  of  the  negative,  the  impulse  to  rationality 
throbbing  through  humanity  is  only  saying : 

"Build  thee  more  stately  mansions,  O  my  soul, 

As  the  swift  seasons  roll ! 

Leave  thy  low-vaulted  past ! 
Let  each  new  temple,  nobler  than  the  last. 
Shut  thee  from  heaven  with  a  dome  more  vast. 

Till  thou  at  length  art  free. 
Leaving  thine  outgrown  shell  by  life's  unresting  sea." 

But  no  age  does  the  work  it  thinks  it  is  doing.  Later  -times 
evaluate  all  differently.  "After  us  the  deluge"  in  a  different 
sense  than  that  meant  in  this  proverb  of  self-conceit.  It  is  the 
deluge  of  fertilizing  rains  and  ploughings  and  harrowings  and 
reaping  of  winnowed  grain,  sometimes  tenfold  and  more.     His- 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY  \^ 

tory  no  longer  recites  merely  the  mistakes  of  men  and  institu- 
tions, but  reads  the  phase  of  reason  at  work  in  them.  It  looks 
at  them  as  expressions  of  the  life  of  the  times,  rooted  in  previous 
conditions  and  preparing  the  way  for  new  ones.  In  other 
words,  it  looks  at  the  rationality  of  history,  under  the  conception 
of  an  immanent  impulse  to  rationality  in  humanity — a  struggle 
towards  concrete  freedom.  Chance  and  petty  Providence,  and 
decadence,  and  straightforward  progress,  and  cycles  are  no 
longer  the  categories  used  to  understand  history.  The  concep- 
tion of  development  is  the  regnant  conception.  And  develop- 
ment contains  the  negative,  as  the  dynamic  element  of  the 
process.  In  this  progress  of  man  into  concrete  freedom,  every 
step  forward  is  like  walking — throwing  one's  self  off  of  one's 
balance,  or  static  condition,  to  catch  the  static  form  further 
along.  The  new  good  is  ever  coming  by  the  negation  of  a  past 
good,  when  that  becomes  good  for  but  little.  And  yet  the  new 
is  rooted  in,  and  has  its  bond  of  continuity  with,  the  old. 

"The  history  of  the  world  is  the  judgment-  of  the  world" — 
not  the  condemnation  of  any  period  or  institution,  but  the  valu- 
ation of  them  all  as  phases  of  rationality.  "The  history  of  the 
world,  with  all  the  changing  scenes  its  annals  present,  is  this 
process  of  the  development  and  realization  of  spirit — this  is  the 
true  Theodicy — the  justification  of  God  in  history."^ 

The  function  of  non-conformity  in  thought  is  also  the  func- 
tion of  the  negative — not  that  of  the  absolutely  negative,  but 
that  of  the  fulfilling  negative — itself  being  a  phase  of  reason. 
It  is  thought's  own  self-imposed  negative,  a  self-sacrifice  as  a 
stage  towards  fuller  self-realization.  It  is  the  mediating  ele- 
ment— the  bridge  that  leads  from  a  lower  to  a  higher  stage  of 
thought.  It  is  thought's  own  recognition  of  the  inherent  antin- 
omy involved  in  every  finite  statement,  before  it  sees  the  higher 
point  of  view  at  which  the  antinomy  is  resolved.  It  is  thought's 
own  criticism  of  its  uncriticised  dogmas.     And  an  uncriticised 

*  Hegel's  Philosophy  of  History,  p.  477 
2 


i8  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

dogma  soon  loses  its  worth.  It  must  criticise  itself  into  cecu- 
menicity  as  the  various  ante-Nicene  doctrines  as  to  the  person 
of  Christ  criticised  themselves  into  the  oecumenical  dogma  of 
the  Divinity  of  Christ.  So  with  the  categories  of  thought. 
Each  lower  category  is,  and  anon  it  is  not,  till  it  is  seen  fulfilled 
in  a  higher  one.  "On  stepping  stones  of  its  dead  self"  it  rises  to 
higher  thoughts.  This  immanent  criticism  of  the  various  cate- 
gories of  thought  up  from  that  of  mere  empty  being — as  good  as 
nothing — through  those  of  quantity,  substance,  cause  and  effect 
to  reciprocity  and  thence  through  mechanism,  teleology,  this 
criticism  impels  thought  onward  till  that  of  absolute  vS^/Z-con- 
sciousness  is-  reached,  wherein  all  dialectic  of  the  negative 
ceases.  This  is  the  work  done  by  Hegel  in  his  Logic.  The 
negative  is  thus  seen  to  be,  not  an  alien  force,  but  an  immanent 
movement  of  life  in  each  category.  Finally  it  is  seen  to  be  the 
child  of  love — the  condescension  of  the  infinite  to  show  the  in- 
adequacy of  the  finite  it  had  made,  as  a  stage  of  truth.  The 
key-word  which  Hegel  uses  to  express  this  function  of  the  nega- 
tive and  its  result,  is  Aufheben.  This  he  tells  us^  has  the  double 
signification  of  (i)  to  destroy  or  annul;  (2)  to  preserve  or 
fulfill.  Thus  the  negative  is  iconoclastic  and  yet  architectonic. 
Or  rather  concrete  thought  uses  the  negative  as  its  organ  for 
transforming  any  posited  conception  and  at  the  same  time  ele- 
vating it.  Thus  the  gospel  annuls  the  law,  the  fruit  the  blossom, 
the  man  the  child,  the  true  the  false,  the  infinite  the  finite — by 
fulfilling  them. 

Thus  all  non-conformity  in  creed  or  deed  is  a  positive  nega- 
tive, or  has  the  positive  function  of  transforming  and  fulfilling 
outworn  creed  and  institution.  It  is  itself  not  without  form, 
though  often  it  hides  itself  under  this  veil. 

But  taken  by  itself  at  one  stage — the  stage  of  protest — ere 
it  has  yet  taken  up  the  good  and  true  in  the  old — it  has  the  form 
of  moral  and  intellectual  scepticism.    And  that  was  the  evil 

^  Logic,  §  96. 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY  19 

element  in  the  Age  of  Reason.  That  age  is  now  stigmatized  on 
all  hands,  as  "the  unhistorical  age."  It  is  called  "the  age  of 
abstract  reason,"  as  it  ignored  the  concrete  contents  of  human 
nature  as  educated  through  ages  of  social  organisms.  It  is 
faulted  for  not  seeing  that  what  one  thinks  and  does,  depend 
upon  his  intellectual  and  ethical  heritage  and  environment, 
through  which  the  individual  is  informed,  enlightened,  rational- 
ized by  conformity,  conscious  or  unconscious.  Psychology, 
sociology,  science,  history,  literature  and  politics  alike  scoff  at 
its  abstract  conception  of  reason  and  individuality. 

The  reason  that  is  now  appealed  to  as  authoritative,  is  not 
that  of  any  and  every  empirical  individual,  except  so  far  as  he 
has  had  the  corporate  reason  of  mankind  worked  into  him  by 
education.  To  repeat  Aristotle's  illustration,  a  hand  cut  off 
from  the  living  body  is  no  longer  a  hand.  So  the  individual 
apart  from  vital  relations  with  the  intellectual  and  social  organ- 
isms, ceases  to  be  an  organ  of  reason,  theoretical  or  practical. 
The  conception  that  science,  sociology  and  philosophy  now  give 
of  the  individual  is  that  of  an  organic  member  of  an  organic 
system. 

Still  it  is  possible  for  the  most  advanced  thinkers,  to  write 
and  fight  on  the  over-come  standpoint  of  sheer  individualism. 
Thus  Professor  Seth  says :  "Each  self  is  a  unique  existence, 
which  is  perfectly  impervious,  if  I  may  so  say,  to  other  selves — 
impervious  in  a  fashion  of  which  the  impenetrability  of  matter 
is  a  faint  analogue.  The  self,  accordingly,  resists  invasion :  in 
its  character  of  self  it  refuses  to  admit  another  self  within  itself, 
and  thus  be  made,  as  it  were,  a  mere  retainer  of  something 
else."^  I  have  elsewhere^  commented  on  this  frank  expression 
of  the  old  conception  of  individualism.  In  the  same  connection 
he  speaks  of  the  self  being  "in  existence  or  metaphysically,  a 
principle  of  isolation." 

Etymologically,  it  is  true,  an  individual  is  an  undividable 

^  Seth's  Hegelianism  and  Personality,  p.  227. 

^Studies  in  Hegel's  Philosophy  of  Religion,  pp.  170-175. 


20  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

atom.  Individuus  is  the  Latin  for  the  drofMOi  of  Democritus. 
But  in  neither  physics  or  metaphysics  is  such  a  thing  ever 
more  than  a  convenient  fiction.  At  most  an  individual  is 
one  of  its  kind  or  genus,  and  is  real  only  as  it  includes  its  kind 
by  participation.  Its  kind  is  the  prior  and  essential  condition  of 
the  reality  of  any  of  its  own  being.  The  kind,  the  genus  is  real, 
though  not  real  apart  from  its  self-differentiation  into  organic 
members,  as  the  body  is  not  a  real  living  body  apart  from  its 
self -specification  into  organic  members.  It  is  this  conception  of 
organic  membership,  of  function  within  a  system,  that  is  now 
the  dominant  conception  of  the  individual.  This  is  true  even  in 
physics.  There  are  not  a  lot  of  impervious,  isolated  forces ;  but 
there  is  a  system  of  forces,  as  self-specifications  of  one  force. 
So  with  human  individualities.  The  conception  of  uniqueness 
as  the  essential  character  of  an  individual  has  been  greatly 
modified.  "There  is  none  like  myself"  is  too  ungeneric  a  con- 
ception. I  am  one  of  my  kind,  and  I  am  I,  only  so  far  as  I  open 
my  windows  and  let  in  the  universal,  kindred  reality.  Again 
this  universal  is  not  an  abstract,  unmediated  universal.  It  is 
specified  in  others  with  whom  I  am  in  essential  relations  physical, 
mental  and  moral.  The  concrete  individual  is  a  whole  complex 
of  hereditary  and  environing  elements  held  together  in  one  con- 
sciousness, which  itself  exists  only  in  relation  to  the  not  self 
and  to  other  selves.  He  is  unique  only  as  a  member  of  an 
organism  through  which  the  pulse  beat  of  the  kind  throbs. 
Hand,  nor  head,  nor  heart  can  do  their  work  unless  they  are  or- 
ganic members  of  a  higher  organic  unity. 

Such  illustrations  from  physical  organisms  must  not  be 
taken  as  more  than  feeble  analogies  of  the  moral  organisms  of 
humanity.  We  know  how  many  students  of  anthropology  and 
sociology  press  the  analogy  into  identity,  thus  interpreting  all 
forms  of  mental  and  moral  organisms  as  physical  rather  than 
spiritual.  This  is  too  often  the  bad  metaphysic  accompanying 
■good  science.     The  analogy  of  a  physical  organism  is  reduced  to 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY  31 

that  of  an  automatic  mechanism  and  then  used  to  interpret  all 
personal  and  sociological  forms. 

But,  as  a  living  man  cannot  even  as  a  physical  organism  be 
explained  by  all  that  is  necessary  to  explain  a  corpse,  so  an 
ethical  organism  cannot  be  explained  as  a  physical  one  can  be. 
Thus  far  we  have  an  analogy  for  ethical  organisms.  Here  the 
analogy  ends.  For  in  a  physical  organism  we  do  not  have  mem- 
bers that  are  self-conscious  and  capable  of  determining  them- 
selves as  functions  of  the  whole — of  realizing  themselves  by 
realizing  the  kind  of  the  whole.  Here  means  and  end  become 
more  vitally  reciprocal.  The  organs  are  themselves  organisms 
in  a  sense  that  a  hand  is  not.  So  means  and  -end  cease  to  be 
relatively  external.  Society  is  not  an  external  means  for  the 
welfare  of  the  individual  as  Spencer  holds,  nor  are  individuals 
external  means  for  the  welfare  of  society,  as  'many  empirical 
sociologists  hold.  Society  does  not  pass  away  when  it  has  per- 
fected a  lot  of  individuals,  as  at  would  were  it  only  an  external 
means.  So  far  as  we  can  think  it  is  as  eternal  as  man.  Nor 
can  we  think  of  a  lot  of  perfected  men  out  of  a  kingdom  or  re- 
public. 

Spencer's  "man  versus  the  state"  is  a  man-destroying  con- 
ception. Again,  while  moral  organisms  are  the  conditions  of 
the  moral  life  of  individuals,  its  members  have  a  personal  worth 
of  their  own,  as  members  of  physical  organisms  do  not. 
Apart  from  some  such  membership,  they  might  be  physical  or- 
ganisms— a  lot  of  individual  bodies — in  that  state  of  nature 
which  Hobbes  characterized  as  a  helium  omnium  contra  omnes, 
where  the  life  of  the  individuals  would  be  "solitary,  poor,  nasty, 
brutish  and  short." 

Any  sociology  that  explains  individuals  as  mechanical  parts 
of  a  quasi-physical  organism — fails  to  recognize  the  place  and 
worth  of  members  in  ethical  organisms.  Ethics  is  not  physics, 
any  more  than  psychology  is  physiology — as  Hobbes  and  some 
new  psychologists  maintain. 

It  is  this  error  of  explaining  the  higher  by  the  lower;  of 


22  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

carrying  a  physical  explanation  into  non-physical  realms  that  is 
to  blame  for  our  repugnance  to  the  social  view  of  man.  And 
we  ought  to  revolt  from  any  theory  that  negates  the  comparative 
worth  of  the  individual.  I  am  a  member,  and  yet  /  am  I. 
Through  me  the  whole  kind  pulsates,  and  yet  I  am  I.  True  it 
is  that  I  am  not  I,  if  I  am  not  one  of  my  kind,  if  the  kindred 
spirit  does  not  pulsate  through  me.  But  I  am  a  conscious  mem- 
ber. I  can  consciously  conform  to  the  life  of  the  whole — play 
my  part  in  the  common  life,  mind  my  own  business  as  a  member 
incorporate  and  thus  fulfill  myself  in  fulfilling  my  function  in  the 
social  whole. 

The  uniqueness  of  individuality  is  the  uniqueness  of  function 
or  purpose  within  a  systematic  unity,  which  realizes  itself  in  and 
through  its  differentiations  into  members  or  organs.  But 
within  this  higher  unity — say  humanity — each  organ  is  itself  a 
systematic  unity,  of  self  and  not  self  and  of  the  various  "mes" 
within  myself,  to  use  James'  expression. 

One's  own  individual  self  is  the  constant  identity  in  differ- 
ence. Take  such  expressions  as  the  following:  'T  was  not 
myself  when  I  did  that;"  "she  has  never  been  the  same  since 
her  child  died ;"  "I  don't  feel  a  bit  like  myself  to-day ;"  "he  was 
more  of  himself  "  or  "less  than  himself  when  he  did  that ;"  '7 
am  ashamed  of  myself  for  doing  that ;"  or  take  the  religious  ex- 
pressions "grant  that  the  old  Adam  in  this  person  may  be  so 
buried  that  the  new  man  may  be  raised  up  in  him ;"  "it  is  no 
longer  I  that  live,  but  Christ  that  liveth  in  me ;"  or  take  the  illus- 
tration given  by  hypnotism  and  abnormal  psychology  as  to  "al- 
ternate" and  "multiple  personalities"  in  the  same  individual,  and 
one  may  see  how  the  static  conception  of  individuality  must  be 
corrected. 

Then  too  the  content  of  the  individual  will  be  seen  to  be  one 
chiefly  of  relations  to  other  selves.  It  is  true  that  without  re- 
flection we  forget  this  social  content  of  the  individual.  Tarde 
says :  "Every  social  man  is  a  veritable  hypnotic.  Both  the 
hypnotic  and  the  social  man  are  possessed  by  the  illusion  that 


^M 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY  23 

their  ideas,  all  of  which  have  been  suggested  to  them,  are  spon- 
taneous." 

Be  the  uniqueness  of  the  Individual  what  it  may,  it  is  always 
within,  and  as  a  member  of,  a  larger  organism.  This  is  seen  if 
we  make  an  inventory  of  the  contents  of  an  individual  of  even 
so-called  marked  personality.  Or  any  one  may  make  this  analy- 
sis of  his  own  individuality.     I,  John ,  as  a  moral  person 

can  only  define  myself  as  an  unknown  x,  till  I  see  how  I  am  de- 
fined and  fulfilled  by  my  social  relations,  (a)  of  heredity,  and 
{b)  of  social  environment,  of  family,  race,  school,  church  so- 
ciety, avocation  and  state,  (a)  I  did  not  beget  myself,  or  choose 
my  parents,  my  name  and  the  conditions  of  life  into  which  I  was 

born.     I  am  the  son  of who  was  the  son  of  another,  back 

to  Adam,  as  many  of  the  Jews  now  trace  their  pedigree.  St. 
Matthew's  Gospel  begins  thus :  "The  book  of  the  generation  of 
Jesus  Christ."  St.  Luke  traces  the  genealogy  of  Jesus  back 
through  David,  Abraham  and  Seth,  "which  was  the  son  of 
Adam,  which  was  the  Son  of  God,"^ 

Biographers  begin  with  pedigrees.  Their  heroes  are  some- 
body primarily  because  they  are  somebody's  child.  Surely 
Marcus  Aurelius  was  one  of  the  strongest  and  noblest  of  moral 
personalities.  Note  how  he  begins  those  "Thoughts"  that  have 
been  a  moral  tonic  to  all  generations  since  he  wrote.  He 
specifies  what  he  owed  to  his  great-grandfather,  grandfather, 
father  and  mother,  before  he  goes  on  to  specify  what  he  owes  to 
other  fellowmen.  "To  the  gods  I  am  indebted  for  having  good 
grandfathers,  good  parents,  a  good  sister,  good  teachers,  good 
associates,  good  kinsmen  and  friends,  nearly  everything  good."'^ 

Then  (&)  I  John ,  was  not,  thank  God,  born  out  of 

but  into  a  world  of  kindred  fellow  men ;  first  into  the  warm  and 
tender  atmosphere  of  a  home  which  has  saturated  and  formed 
my  likes  and  dislikes,  my  tastes,  habits,  opinions — my  ineradi- 
cable prejudices.     So  deeply  have  I  been  dyed  by  my  domestic 

'  St.  Luke  III.  23,  38. 

*  The  Thoughts  of  the  Emperor  M.  Aurelius  Antoninus,  Bk.  I,  17. 


24  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

atmosphere,  that  I  find  I  cannot  rub  it  off  nor  root  it  out.  I  now 
recognize  the  organic  life  of  my  family  throbbing  in  every 
ethical  vein  of  myself.  First,  then,  I  am  what  I  am  because  I 
have  been  the  son  of  somebody,  an  organic  member  of  some 
family  and  some  pulses  of  that  family  spirit  still  throb  through 
me,  making  me  have  family  peculiarities,  traits,  dispositions, 
prejudices  and  character,  however  much  of  a  cosmopolite  I  have 
since  become. 

Again,  I  am  what  I  am,  more  or  less,  from  the  place  in  which 
I  was  born.  If  so  fortunate  as  to  have  a  good  birthplace  as 
well  as  good  parents,  I  always  mention  this  as  giving  mc  an 
added  worth  and  some  presupposed  excellent  characteristics. 
How  often  we  hear  one  say :  "I  am  from  Boston,"  "I  am  from 
Virginia,  you  know,"  insinuating  that  he  is  to  be  taken  as  pos- 
sessing the  marked  fine  traits  of  character  that  are  attributed  to 
his  birthplace.     When  my  birth-place  is  without  repute,  I  feel 

a  certain  sense  of  humiliation  in  being  introduced  to  Mr. , 

from  a  notable  city,  or  town,  or  county.  So  too  the  disclosure 
the  student  makes  in  saying,  "I'm  from  Harvard,"  or  "I'm  from 
Yale,"  are  forms  of  self-appreciation,  through  places  and  the 
culture  that  they  represent. 

Again  from  being  a  son,  I  have  become  a  father.  A  new 
domestic  ethos  permeates  and  enlarges  me.  Then  I  have  be- 
come more  of  a  somebody,  as  I  have  multiplied  my  relations  to 
my  fellow  men.  Every  new  circle  that  I  have  entered  has  a 
definite  constitution  and  unwritten  traditions,  customs  and  es- 
prit de  corps.  All  the  generic  fund  of  human  culture  in  these 
circles  have  been  throbbing  through  me,  as  a  worthy  conform- 
ing member  of  them.  I  have  been  moralized  as  I  have  become 
habituated  to  the  habits  and  opinions  and  spirit — the  prejudices 
of  my  school,  church,  social  set,  fraternity,  learned  society,  polit- 
ical party,  social  and  patriotic  organization.  So,  if  I  am  to  tell 
who  I  am,  I  must  add  to  my  pedigree  all  social  fiiiations,  that  is, 
societies  of  which  I  am  a  filius — son.  All  of  them  have  been 
^lYOst-parental  authorities,  in  conscious  or  unconscious  submis- 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY  25 

sion  to  which  I  have  been  becoming  a  more  cultivated  man. 
The  mother-tongue  of  all  these  societies  has  become  my  lan- 
guage, the  means  of  social  self-expression.  I  know  that  my 
conversation  betrays  the  societies  to  which  I  belong,  I  know 
that  it  is  the  warm  life-blood  of  them  that  pulsates  through  and 
keeps  me  alive  and  growing.  I  recognize  that  apart  from  them 
I  should  be  a  nobody.  All  lay  their  authoritative  commands 
upon  me.  These  are  my  duties  in  those  stations  in  life  to  which 
it  hath  pleased  nature,  or  chance,  or  God  to  call  me.  They  all 
limit  my  capricious  subjective  whims  of  impulse. 

But  in  these  duties  I  also  recognize  my  rights,  functions  that 
belong  to  me  as  a  cultivated  man.  In  these  duties  I  find  my 
liberation,  that  is,  my  self-realization.  I  am  an  integer  by  being 
an  integral  member  of  these  social  circles.  My  uniqueness  has 
been  becoming  more  and  more  the  uniqueness  of  my  kinds. 
My  integrity  is  conformity  to  their  customs,  laws  and  spirit — 
to  the  duties  of  each  sphere.  My  virtues,  I  see,  to  be  nearly  all 
relative  to  the  functions  I  have  as  an  organic  member  of  these 
warm,  human  moral  organisms.  I  find  that  Schiller  was  right 
when  he  said :  '"Be  a  whole,  or  join  a  whole.  You  cannot  be 
a  whole  unless  you  join  a  whole."  By  all  these  I  have  been  con- 
verted from  a  mere  empty  possibility  into  what  I  really  am. 
These  duties  are  objective,  concrete  and  substantial,  not  begot- 
ten of  my  own  subjective  caprice.  They  are  not,  however, 
foreign  to  my  real  self,  but  kindred.  These  ethical  organisms 
not  only  punish  me  for  non-conformity,  but  I  punish  myself  for 
not  being  a  good  member  of  them,  because  without  the  fulfill- 
ing these  imposed  duties  I  have  not  the  rights  that  belong 
to  me  by  nature — that  is,  by  my  second,  converted,  realized  na- 
ture of  manhood.  My  right  to  life  is  not  merely  a  private  right. 
And,  as  Aristotle  says,^  I  have  not  the  right  to  deal  unjustly 
to  myself — to  commit  suicide.  That  would  be  a  crime  against 
my  family  and  community.     Self-preservation  is  a  duty  im- 

*  Aristotle's  Ethics,  Bk.  IV,  chap.  xvi. 


26  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

posed  on  me  by  the  community  for  the  good  of  the  community, 
and  at  the  same  time  a  right  conferred  on  me  as  a  privilege. 

On  the  other  hand,  I  find  that  I  cannot  sectarianize  myself 
from  these  institutions  without  losing  my  rights — that  apart 
from  family  I  cannot  be  a  good  father  or  son;  apart  from 
church  I  cannot  nourish  my  religious  nature  and  so  on  through 
all  the  spheres  in  which  I  am  a  somebody. 

I  recognize  the  truth  in  Plato's  saying  "The  State  is  man 
writ  large."  And  I  recognize  the  profound  pedagogy  embodied 
in  his  "Republic."  Pedagogy  is  the  art  of  making  men  ethical, 
and  nowhere  has  there  been  such  a  classical  scheme  of  ethical 
education  as  that  embodied  in  this  immortal  work. 

I,  John ,  have  therefore  made  it  a  rule  to  multiply 

my  relations  in  order  to  increase  myself,  rather  than  to  schism.a- 
tize  myself  and  thus  minimize  myself.  And  so  I  pray :  From 
all  sedition,  privy  conspiracy  and  rebellion ;  from  all  false  doc- 
trine, heresy  and  schism — in  my  relations  to  all  these  ethical  or- 
ganisms— "Good  Lord  deliver  me."  Divorced  from  them  I  die. 
"Till  death  us  part,"  then,  let  me  be  a  living  member  of  these 
ethical  circles.     And  then, 

"Till  death  us  join, 
O  voice  yet  more  divine." 

So  speaks  the  heart  and  the  whole  concrete  ethical  nature  of 
man.  What  would  heaven  be  without  mother,  wife,  child,  all 
those 

"Relations  dear  and  all  the  charities 
Of  father,  son  and  brother"? 

So  we  have  "common  worship"  and  "corporate  commun- 
ion," as  means  of  our  corporate  salvation,  till  we  are  come  into 
the  corporate  Kingdom  of  the  Church  triumphant,  with  its  vari- 
ous circles  of  corporate  unions. 

But  this  is  beyond  the  sphere  of  conventional  morality,  and, 
at  present,  we  are  dealing  only  with  this  lower  phase. 

So  we  return  to  the  question  that  has  constantly  been  trying 
to  voice  itself  in  the  midst  of  all  this  talk  about  organisms  and 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY  27 

authority  and  conformity.  Let  us  now  utter  it  frankly  and 
boldly.  What  place  in  all  this  is  left  for  freedom  and  the  rights 
of  the  individual  ?  Has  not  the  individual  been  reduced  to  be- 
ing a  mere  cog  in  a  wheel  of  a  big  machine — that  turns  only  as 
it  is  compelled  to  turn — not  playing  its  own  part  or  doing  its 
own  duty,  but  being  turned  this  way  or  that  by  the  mechanical 
power  that  drives  the  whole  ? 

Yet,  after  reflection,  our  quest  for  freedom  seems  very  like 
that  of  Plato  and  his  friends  for  Justice,  i.  e.,  righteousness 
{8uauo<rwr))  J  after  having  modeled  the  ideal  city  as  a  large 
illustration  of  "the  city  within."  The  model  was  that  of  a  moral 
organism  in  which  each  member  performed  his  own  function — 
a  civic  symphony,  in  which  each  had  a  part  to  play.  Having 
discovered  wisdcMtn  and  courage  and  temperance  in  this  body 
politic,  he  proposes  that  they  now  hunt  for  the  other  cardinal 
virtue — justice.  "Let  us  stand  like  a  party  of  hunters  round  a 
cover,  lest  she  escape  us."  Soon  he  adds :  "Surely  we  have 
been  behaving  very  stupidly  because  the  thing  has  been  tumb- 
ling at  our  feet  all  the  time.  *  *  *  For  the  cardinal  principle  of 
our  ideal  commonwealth  was  that  every  individual  in  it  was  to 
have  some  function,  be  conscious  of  this  function  and  then 
fulfil  it,  i.  e.,  mind  his  own  business,  or  do  his  own  duty.  But 
is  not  the  very  essence  of  justice?"  "Then  justice,"  he  adds, 
"is  not  simply  one  among  the  other  virtues.  But  rather  it  is 
that  which  creates  and  sustains  the  others."^  So  too,  he  goes 
on  to  show,  it  is  with  justice  in  "the  city  within."  One  is  just 
where  he  has  "organized  himself"  and  "made  himself  completely 
a  unity  out  of  multiplicity,"  by  having  each  part  of  his  nature 
play  its  own  part,  through  the  pulsing  of  this  organic  unity 
through  them  all.  This  is  righteousness  and  health  and  free- 
dom.2 

So  too  freedom  has  been  "tumbling  at  our  feet"  all  through 
our  talk  about  authority  and  conformity  and  moral  organisms. 

*  Plato's  Republic,  Bk.  IV,  432-433. 
'  Ibid.,  Bk.  IV,  448. 


28  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

Freedom  is  each  one's  playing  his  own  part,  doing  his  own  duty, 
performing  his  own  function  in  the  social  tissues,  the  moral  or- 
ganisms, of  which  he  is  a  member — apart  from  which,  and  the 
realization  of  which,  he  is  nothing.  Authority  and  conformity 
and  function  are  really  organic  elements  of  concrete  freedom. 
Freedom  is  not  only  essential  to  morality.  Freedom  is  mor- 
ality, or  rather  morality  is  freedom. 

The  subjective  elements  of  personal  conviction  and  self-de- 
termination are  certainly  elements  in  concrete  freedom.  The 
element  of  choice  means  that  man  has  power,  within  limits,  to 
choose  that  to  which  he  conforms.  In  rational  freedom,  it 
means  the  power  to  choose  to  conform  to  his  typal  self.  This 
is  only  possible  for  the  relatively  good  man — the  man  moralized 
by  conformity  to  good  customs.  Milton  says  :  "None  can  love 
freedom  heartily  but  good  men :  the  rest  love  not  freedom  but 
license."  Absolute  freedom,  in  the  sense  of  individual  license, 
is  intolerable  in  any  rational  form  of  life.  To  choose  rationally, 
then,  one  must  first  be  good.  And  he  becomes  good  by  choos- 
ing that  which  pleases  the  moral  societies  of  which  he  is  a 
member;  that  is,  by  conforming  to  authorities,  not  evolved 
from  his  own  inner  consciousness.  There  is  no  real  freedom 
in  choosing  to  act  like  the  devil.  But  whatever  he  chooses  must 
have  some  determinate  form  of  good  or  evil,  that  are  relatively 
objective.  Whence  those  forms?  Is  the  moral  man  ever  au- 
tonomous, as  Kant  held,  in  the  sense  of  begetting  from  within 
these  forms  that  make  his  freedom  objective  and  concrete  ?  Our 
discussion  of  abstract  individuality  shows  us  that  he  is  not.  The 
rather  he  is,  to  use  the  term  so  repugnant  to  Kant,  heteronomous 
— finding  the  laws  to  which  he  conforms  to  be  in  others — the 
typal  laws  of  his  kind — and,  ultimately,  in  God,  the  great  Com- 
panion and  Educator  of  Mankind,  by  means  of  social,  moral  in- 
stitutions. The  individual's  imperium  is  always  in  imperio — in 
some  form  of  the  kingdom  of  man,  which  is  always  some  form 
of  the  Kingdom  of  God.  Thus,  real  freedom  is  just  "the  thing 
which  has  all  the  time  been  tumbling  about  our  feet."     In  a  word 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY  29 

we  have  been  dealing  with  the  genesis  of  the  good  man — with 
his  rational  self-realization  or  concrete  freedom.  Beginning 
with  a  relatively  "given"  element — the  idiosyncrasy  of  the  babe 
— we  have  seen  how,  by  conforming  to  relative  expressions  of 
the  type  of  manhood  in  the  institutions  into  which  he  has  been 
born  without  any  choice,  he  comes  to  relatively  perfect  man- 
hood, which  cannot  choose  to  do  anything  unmanly. 

"I  dare  do  all  that  may  become  a  man : 
Who  dares  do  more  is  none." 

But  Still  comes  the  protest  that  a  conformist  cannot  be  free. 
Do  we  mean  that  the  good  father,  son,  citizen,  churchman — ^the 
one  who  conforms  himself  to  the  ideals  of  these  relationships, 
is  less  free  than  the  one  who  does  not?  It  is  surely  my  duty 
and  right  to  realize  my  ego,  but  it  must  be  my  summus  ego. 
But  this  summus  ego  exists  in  no  mere  individual.  It  is  gen- 
eric, and  I  can  only  make  it  mine  own  by  conformity  to  the 
genus.  It  will  not  do  to  take  the  merely  subjective  standpoint 
and  say  I  am  not  free  unless  I  can  choose  what  I  please.  I  must 
will  only  myself.  Does  that  mean  I  must  will  self-will  ?  If  so, 
which  self?  Again,  would  that  be  freedom  if  the  will  which  I 
will  is  not  itself  self-created  instead  of  being  "given"  to  every 
individual?  Yet  apart  from  this  given  will,  man  can  will 
nothing,  and  with  it  he  can  will  nothing  unless  he  wills  some 
objective  content.^  So  even  the  liberty  of  caprice  becomes  a 
liberty  of  conformity. 

Society  always  takes  care  of  the  kind  of  a  thing  which  the 
individual  chooses.  I  cannot  do  what  I  please,  if  I  am  to  do 
what  I  should  as  a  man.  At  least  it  depends  upon  what  kind  of 
a  man  I  am.  Unless  I  am  a  good  mannered  man,  I  shall  find  no 
place  to  do  as  I  please,  except  in  a  desert,  and  there  I  should 

'  The  classical  characterization  of  both  extremes  has  been  made  once 
for  all  by  Erdmann  in  his  Psychologie,  §  160. 

"The  doctrine  of  determinism  (conformity)  is  a  will  which  wills  noth- 
ing, which  has  not  the  form  of  will :  the  doctrine  of  indeterminism  is 
a  will  which  wills  nothing,  a  will  with  no  content." 


30  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

soon  be  pleased  to  return  to  society.  "Me  this  unchartered  free- 
dom tires."  But  in  society,  thg  insane  asylum,  prison  walls  and 
the  electric  chair  await  me,  if  I  do  not  please  to  do  as  my  fellows 
please.  It  is  this  shallow  conception  of  doing  as  one  pleases  in 
order  to  be  free,  that  is  the  lingering  heritage  and  heresy  of  the 
eighteenth  century  rationalism.  It  takes  freedom  in  its 
etymological  sense,  (liber,  freon  +  dom)  i.  e.,  to  be  free  from 
dominion.  That  is,  freedom  is  a  privative  term,  meaning  to  be 
free  from  everything  but  self,  let  this  self  be  what  it  may — ^the 
empirical  self  of  the  stubborn  child  or  of  the  bad  man.  Emanci- 
pation from  dominion  must  be  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave — 
wherever  there  is  an  empirical  me.  I  am  only  free  when  I  can 
assert  my  own  private,  peculiar  self. 

I  demur  to  the  pedagogic  maxim  that  everybody  is  some- 
body's child.  That  will  do  for  children — no  child  is  his  own 
child.  That  is  a  silly  platitude.  But  I  am  a  man,  and  I  can  do 
as  I  please.  I  am  nobody's  child.  Yes  !  But  you  are  not  your 
own  child.  At  least  you  have  been  begotten  of  a  father,  and 
begotten  into  un-chosen  environments.  As  a  man,  you  may  be 
self-made,  and  very  well  made  at  that,  but  you  have  none  the  less 
made  yourself  under  sustaining  and  helpful  social  environment. 
In  a  desert  you  would  have  made  a  very  different  sort  of  a 
being — at  best,  a  Mogli. 

You  are  a  man  and  you  can  do  as  you  please.  Yes,  but  you 
are  a  man  because  you  have  the  manners  of  a  man.  Yes,  with- 
in certain  socially  prescribed  limits.  And  then  even  those 
things  indifferent  are  made  indifferent  by  society.  It  will  even 
allow  a  man  to  play  the  harlequin  on  the  stage,  or  to  play  the 
bear  with  his  children.  Society  recognizes,  as  belonging  to 
the  function  of  every  member  even  a  relatively  capricious  sort 
of  choice — a  sphere  of  "things  indifferent."  But  the  freedom 
accorded  by  society  is  always  within  the  limits  of  the  human. 
Its  object  is  to  "turn  out  men." 

But  when  we  turn  to  mere  capricious  choosing,  which  de- 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITK  31 

dines  any  of  the  definitely  human  forms,  we  are  turning  away 
from  freedom. 

"Insist  upon  yourself;  never  imitate,"  says  Emerson.  But 
if  the  self  is  bad  or  worthless,  such  self-insistence  is  suicidal 
and,  socially,  criminal. 

Christianity  says  that  such  a  man  is  a  slave.  Protestantism 
never  maintained  the  right  of  the  individual  to  choose  to  glorify 
and  enjoy  himself.  "The  chief  end  of  man  is  to  glorify  God  and 
to  enjoy  Him  forever,"  in  all  the  corporate  forms  of  life  here 
and  hereafter.  Man's  chief  end  is  to  be  attained ;  his  real  free- 
dom won,  by  his  choosing  to  be  a  ministering  member  of  God's 
kingdom.  "God's  service  is  perfect  freedom."  And  when 
Protestantism  comes  to  specify  just  what  God's  service  is,  it  has 
always  done  full  justice  to  the  earthly  institutions  of  the  family, 
church,  state  and  the  various  other  forms  of  civilized  life.  It 
has  never  represented  God's  service  as  mere  abstract  spirituality. 
It  has  been  the  most  potent  factor  in  all  forms  of  social 
righteousness,  because  it  has  insisted  that  God's  kingdom  is  to 
have  as  its  nursery  a  terrestrial  kingdom. 

But,  it  is  objected  again,  that  all  men  are  by  nature  free  and 
equal.  This  is  only  true  when  nature  is  used  in  Aristotle's  sense 
of  the  fully  realized  man.  Taking  it  in  the  empirical  sense,  it  is 
patent  that  men  are  by  nature  unequal.  It  is  only  by  means  of 
a  common  equal  education,  intellectual  and  moral,  that  men 
become  equal  in  a  community.  That  is  the  ideal  of  modern 
politics,  but  not  the  empirical  reality  that  faces  us.  A  law  is  a 
liberty  because  it  enounces  a  principle,  conformity  to  which 
helps  realize  man's  common,  equal  nature.  If  all  men  should 
at  all  times  conform  to  all  the  intellectual  moral,  social  and 
political  laws  of  their  community,  there  would  be  more  truth  in 
the  saying  that  "all  men  are  by  nature  free  and  equal."  And 
in  such  conditions  of  objective  liberty  there  would  be  more  room 
for  the  free  play  of  educated  individuality.  Authorities  are 
objective  reason — empirically  the  reason  of  the  community, 
grounded  in  and  grades  of  the  Reason  of  the  Universe.     What 


32  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

folly  then — a  folly  nowheres  tolerated — that  any  and  every  man 
should  have  the  right  to  choose^  as  he  pleases  in  every  sphere  of 
thought  and  action.  The  narrow  minded,  the  ignorant,  the 
vicious — all  these  are  our  fellow  men.  Must  each  one  of  them 
say  with  the  sophists  of  old,  I  am  the  measure  of  all  things? 
My  pint  cup  measure  is  as  true  as  the  measures  given  by  any 
standardizing  Bureau  of  Weights  and  Measures.  Brother  Jas- 
per's measure  gives  us  the  sun  moving  around  the  earth.  Sister 
Smith  prescribes  for  the  diphtheria  what  cured  her  of  a  colic. 
And  so,  through  all  the  orthodox  forms  of  logic,  science  and 
morals,  each  man  is  to  be  his  own  judge  of  what  is  good  and 
true.  Plato,  in  criticising  the  sophists,  playfully  suggests  that 
this  emancipation  be  extended  to  the  baboon.^  Let  the  ape  have 
his  right  of  private  judgment.  Let  emancipation  from  common 
laws  be  universal.  Let  every  man  of  any  community  be  per- 
mitted to  violate  every  good  form,  in  logic,  language,  morals, 
manners,  religion ;  let  every  one  think  and  do  as  he  pleases  and 
then — how  soon  the  community  would  cease  to  be.  Communal 
laws,  authorities,  dispositions,  however,  have  always  protested 
against  such  protesting  non-conformity.  Authority  has  always 
stood  for  objective  reason,  in  conforming  to  which  individuals 
become  more  and  more  free  and  equal.  Authority  is  always  a 
form  of  objective  reason,  and  freedom  is  always  formed  will, 
will  habituated  to  good  manners. 

Nor,  again,  will  it  do  to  define  freedom  as  the  power  to 
choose  between  indifferent  or  opposite  things — the  Uhertas  ar- 
bitrii  or  the  Uhertas  indifferentiae.  Any  psychological  analysis 
will  show  the  impossibility  of  this.  Motiveless  choice  is  mo- 
tionlessness  of  will.  Buridan's  ass,  starving  to  death  between 
two  equal  and  equally  distant  bunches  of  hay,  because  he  lacked 
this  liberty  of  indifference,  is  an  ass  that  never  existed.  If  I 
could  choose  without  motives,  then  I  could  never  say  to  my 
friend,  you  can  depend  upon  my  doing  this  rather  than  that. 
The  rather,  I  would  have  to  say  to  him,  there's  no  accounting 
^Theaetetus,  i6i. 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY  33 

for  what  I  may  do  at  any  time.  Nor  could  we  ever  predict  what 
our  friend  might  do.  There  wo^ild  be  no  depending  upon  any- 
body's course  of  action,  because  of  this  hberty  of  caprice.  Is 
not  our  character,  our  conformed  "formed  will,"  that  which 
gives  our  friend  ground  to  depend  upon  us?  The  more  thor- 
oughly formed  our  will  is,  the  more  accurately  he  can  predict 
just  what  we  shall  do  in  certain  circumstances.  He  knows  that 
we  have  not  liberty  of  caprice  in  virtue  of  which  we  can  choose 
to  do  either  the  right  or  wrong  thing  at  any  time. 

The  truth  is  that  as  I  am  so  I  will  choose.  I  choose  what  is 
congruous  with  my  formed  self  at  the  moment  of  choosing.  The 
man  is  the  will.  So  it  makes  much  difference  what  sort  of  man 
it  is  that  chooses.  I  may  act  like  an  angel  or  like  an  ass,  like 
Philip  drunk  or  Philip  sober,  if  I  let  the  empirical  ego  of  the  mo- 
ment be  the  man.  And  this  I  must  do,  if  I  do  not  have  character 
— a  formed  state  of  the  will.  It  is  only  so  far  as  our  will  is  not 
thoroughly  habituated  or  conformed  to  good  forms  that  we  can 
say  with  Ovid,  Video  meliora  prohoque,  deteriora  sequor;  or 
with  St.  Paul,  "the  good  that  I  would  do  I  do  not,  but  the  evil 
that  I  would  not  that  I  do."  (Romans  vii,  19.)  Nor  can  I 
ascribe  it  to  myself  if  I  follow  the  meliora  and  to  the  devil  if  I 
follow  the  deteriora.  As  Aristotle  taught,  a  man  is  equally  re- 
sponsible for  both  kinds  of  action — even  where  he  has  so  char- 
acterized himself  in  evil  ways  as  to  be  incapable  of  good  action.^ 
The  only  way  to  real  freedom  is  conformity  of  the  empirical 
selves  in  me  to  an  ideal  self,  which,  we  have  seen,  is  a  social  self. 
It  is  in  this  sense  that  St.  Paul,  when  he  felt  that  he  was  con- 
formed to  Christ,  could  say,  "It  is  no  longer  I" — the  empty  or 
bad  empirical  self — "but  Christ  that  liveth  in  me."  The  true 
self  is  always  an  alter  ego — the  social  self.  And  true  freedom  is 
the  conduct*  congruous  with  this  other  self.  I  have  freedom  in 
bonds,  not  freedom  from  bonds.  Thus  I  am  only  free  when  I 
am  not  free  from  social  functions,,  from  functioning  as  a  good 
parent  or  child,  citizen  or  churchman. 

*  Aristotle's  Ethics,  Bk.  Ill,  chap.  viL 
3 


34  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

But  I  may  have  so  conformed  to  the  manners  of  thieves,  that 
I  cannot  conform  to  the  manners  of  honest  gentry.  This  is  St. 
Augustine's  doctrine,  as  well  as  that  of  Aristotle  and  St.  Paul. 
He  describes  the  state  of  the  non  posse  non  pcccare  as  well  as 
the  heata  necessitas  non  posse  peccare.  As  I  am  so  I  act.  My 
conduct  is  determined  by  my  character. 

But  as  I  act,  I  become.  That  is,  character  is  rarely  more 
than  relatively  characterized.  I  am  becoming  free  is  the  most 
we  can  say.  I  am  "organizing  myself"  as  a  good  member  of 
society  by  my  more  or  less  conscious  conformity  to  consti- 
tuted social  authorities.  I  like  or  dislike  this  or  that  as  my 
taste  has  been  cultivated  towards  objective  standards.  The 
whole  of  my  self-culture  has  been  in  the  medium  of  social  cul- 
ture. My  conscience — using  this  complex  of  judgment,  and 
emotion  in  the  popular  sense  —  rests  upon  a  basis  of  social 
authority.  As  Green  says:  "No  individual  can  make  a  con- 
science for  himself.  He  always  needs  a  society  to  make  it  for 
him.  A  conscientious  heresy,  religious  or  political,  always 
represents  some  gradually  maturing  social  conviction  as  to  the 
social  good,  already  implicitly  involved  in  the  ideas  on  which 
the  accepted  rules  of  conduct  rest."^ 

The  conscience  of  the  good  man  has  a  history.  It  is  an 
educated  conscience.  It  becomes  relatively  inerrant  as  it  be- 
comes less  private  and  more  socialized.  Its  autonomy  rests 
upon  heteronomy,  as  this  last  ultimately  rests  upon  and  is  de- 
rived from  a  theonomy.  The  voice  of  conscience  is  the  voice 
of  God,  as  mediated  by  all  his  human  means  of  revelation. 
There  is  no  absolute  autonomous  or  self-la wgiving  man,  except 
in  the  sense  of  imposing  upon  himself  laws  which  are  7wt  of  his 
own  making,  though  seen  to  be  laws  in  conformity  with  which 
alone  he  can  realize  his  essential  nature.  It  is  my  conscience 
because  it  is  the  internalization  in  my  consciousness  of  concrete, 
objective  moral  laws,  imbedded  in  personal  feelings.  It  is  the 
public  conscience,  in  so  far  as  that  is  the  work  of  the  immanent 

^Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  p.  351. 


I 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY  35 

law-giver,  operative  in  the  processes  of  human  history,  giving 
men  ideals  of  a  common  good,  and  progressively  expanding 
and  elevating  their  ideals  of  this  common  good. 

The  whole  is  a  process  of  self-  realization,  or  a  progress  into 
freedom.  In  this  process  there  is  always  authority  and  always 
conformity.  Compulsory  morality  is  not  as  good  as  none. 
For  there  is  no  morality  without  the  element  of  compulsion.  In 
its  lowest  external  form  it  is  at  least  educative  to  a  higher  self- 
compelled  morality.  And  in  the  morality  of  the  best  of  men  it 
takes  the  more  spiritual  form  of  the  Divine  compulsion. 

In  all  its  forms  it  must  be  strictly  distinguished  from  phys- 
ical, mechanical  compulsion.  It  is  in  a  realm  where  the  cate- 
gories of  physics  have  no  subject  matter  and  where  teleology 
supplants  mechanism.  It  is  the  immanent  end  in  the  race  and 
in  its  members  expressing  itself  in  good  forms.  Even  the  lowest 
form  and  certainly  the  highest  form  of  compulsion  in  morality, 
is  rather  that  of  persuasion.  We  persuade  or  dissuade  our 
children  as  to  certain  courses  of  conduct  by  personal  influence 
and  example ;  by  line  upon  line  and  precept  upon  precept.  All 
forms  of  our  social  relations  persuade  or  dissuade  as  to  certain 
forms  of  conduct.  We  are  thus  educated  into  conviction  as  to 
right  ways  of  action.  So  God  compels — persuades  mankind 
into  better  and  better  forms  of  living.  This  persuasive  form  of 
the  Divine  grace  is  mediated  to  individuals  through  social  in- 
stitutions. This  central  principle  of  persuasive  authority  is  that 
of  the  Christian  doctrine  of  Divine  Grace,  so  that  ultimately 
man  is  finding  that  conformity  to  God's  authority, — that  is, 
"God's  service"  is  "perfect  freedom." 

But  here  we  have  again  transcended  (a)  the  standpoint  of 
conventional  morality  and  the  utter  conformity  of  the  individual 
to  the  prescriptions  of  his  sets.  In  fact  we  have  also  tran- 
scended, (b)  the  standpoint  of  morality  altogether — even  the 
subjective  standpoint  of  the  good  will,  or  duty  for  duty's  sake. 

We  have  reached  the  standpoint  that  everybody  is  always 
God's  child.     Even  though  he  be  a  prodigal  son,  the  dialectic  of 


36  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

both  thought  and  Hfe  is  a  compulsory  or  persuasive  power  to 
take  him  back  to  the  Father.  This  is  the  theological  doctrine  of 
Divine  Grace,  so  emphasized  by  St.  Paul,  St.  Augustine  and 
John  Calvin.  It  is  the  central  principle  of  theology,  the  soul  of 
mysticism  and  the  heart  of  religion.  When  freed  from  its  acci- 
dental limitations,  even  its  negative  form  of  Divine  wrath  as  a 
consuming  fire,  is  seen  to  be  a  phase  of  Divine  Grace,  as  it 
sweeps  onward  to  convert  even  the  devil  himself  and  to  drown 
out  the  inextinguishable  fires  of  an  everlasting  hell,  leaving  at 
most  the  refining  and  transforming  experience  of  a  purgatory. 
The  future  Divine  Comedy,  when  a  new  Dante  is  born  to  write 
it,  will  drop  the  Inferno  or  at  least  its  everlasting  character,  mak- 
ing it  the  lowest  circle  of  God's  educational  school  of  a  Piirga- 
torio. 

(a)  We  have  transcended  the  standpoint  of  merely  conven- 
tional morality,  though  we  have  maintained  that  it  is  educative 
of  the  form  of  conscience,  so  that  private  judgment  becomes  the 
judgment  of  a  man,  not  that  of  an  ass  or  a  criminal. 

We  have  throughout  used  the  term  Reason  in  its  most  con- 
crete sense,  as  including  and  fulfilling  both  abstractions  of  in- 
tellectualism  and  pragmatism.  And  we  have  impliedly  worked 
with  the  presupposition  that  this  concrete  reason  in  mankind, 
is  the  progressive  utterance  of  the  universal  concrete  Reason  in 
the  dialects  of  various  peoples  and  ages.  Thus  we  have  im- 
plicitly acknowledged  the  imperfection  of  the  finite,  whose  only 
glory  is  that  of  being  a  stage  through  which  the  glory  of  the 
infinite  pulses  and  shines. 

What  need  for  us,  therefore,  to  retrace  our  pages  and  specify 
the  limitations  of  conventional  morality  f  Yet  a  brief  sketch  of 
this  process  of  transcendence  may  be  in  place. 

First,  any  status  quo  of  any  ethical  organism  may  be  one  of 
corruption  and  decadence.  There  are  rotten  stages  of  all  forms 
of  ethical  organizations.  There  are  times  when  men  are  not 
better  but  worse  than  their  creeds.  The  fundamental  principles, 
the  traditions  and  customs  of  a  virile,  pristine  organism  may 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY  37 

all  be  violated  secretly  or  openly.  These  are  the  times  for 
reformers  to  arise.  But  reformers  never  use  their  own  private 
judgment.  It  is  in  the  name  of  the  letter  and  spirit  of  the 
acknowledged  authorities  that  they  protest.  They  are  indi- 
viduals who  have  been  thoroughly  imbued  with  the  principles  of 
their  organization,  whose  characters  have  been  formed  into  full 
conformity  with  its  letter  and  spirit.  They  cannot  smother 
their  social  conscience  or  gloss  departure  in  others  from  its  dic- 
tates. They  seek,  primarily,  only  to  have  men  conform  to  the 
professed  conventional  morality.  Be  true  to  the  ideals  of  thy 
set ;  return  to  the  "good  old  times."  The  Reformer's  first  cry  is, 
be  loyal — a  cry  of  conservatism.  His  spirit  is  filial — that  of  the 
Fifth  Commandment  towards  his  society.  He  criticises  current 
corruptions  by  the  institution  itself. 

But,  secondly,  the  reformer  is  always  w.ore  than  a  mere  con- 
servative of  the  past  of  his  institution.  Every  restoration  turns 
out  to  be  a  revolution.  And  this  is  because  of  the  inherent  dia- 
lectic of  every  finite  form.  Be  the  conformity  absolutely 
perfect,  the  form  itself  is  imperfect.  The  status  quo  is  never 
the  status  Unalis.  Old  forms  are  not  only  slighted  and  become 
corrupt,  but  they  become  old.  Civilizations  rise,  ripen  and  rot. 
Yet  ever,  phoenix  like,  they  rise  again  out  of  their  ashes,  but 
rise  transformed.  Finality  of  any  status  quo  means  lack  of 
virility  and  final  sterility.  The  morality  of  the  Chinese  has  been 
stigmatized  as  this  dead  sort  of  life  in  death.  Surely  we  must 
recognize  the  limitations  of  the  Chinese  phase  of  culture.  But 
surely,  too,  we  should  recognize  that  it  has,  at  least,  given  them 
the  blessing  annexed  to  the  Fifth  Commandment — "that  thy 
days  may  be  long  in  the  land  which  the  Lord  thy  God  giveth 
thee."  The  Chinese  surely  have  this  blessing  because  they  are 
at  the  opposite  pole  of  practice  from  that  too  regnant  in  our  own 
country  that  makes  the  Fifth  Commandment  to  read,  "Parents, 
obey  your  children."  With  what  delightful  humour  Plato 
plays  with  this  conception  of  the  younger  teaching  their  elders 
— especially  in  his  character  of  Polus  in  The  Gorgias. 


38  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

The  Qiinese  have  a  very  perfect  form  of  education  for  pro- 
ducing this  conservative  spirit — that  of  the  memorization  of 
their  classics.  Too  much  memorizing  means  too  little  reflection. 
Besides,  that  which  is  memorized  by  the  Chinese,  is  the  wisdom 
of  the  past.  They  aim  at,  and  attain,  reverence  for  the  past. 
Let  the  present  be  like  the  past,  is  their  ideal.  It  conserves  the 
paternal,  or  the  great-grandfather  form  of  the  civilization. 
They  seem  to  be  impervious  to  the  restless  dialectic  of  the  on- 
forcing  negative.  They  have  not  learned  the  comparative 
degree  of  the  good,  or  they  have  confounded  the  positive  degree 
with  the  superlative.  The  good  of  the  past  is  the  best  for  the 
present.     There  is  no  better. 

But  the  immanent  dialectic  in  all  forms,  is  that  the  good 
implies  a  better,  and  that,  a  best.  No  good  status  quo  is  as 
good  as  the  best.  The  best  criticises  the  good  into  the  better, 
out  of  the  old  into  the  new.  A  break  with  the  past  and  the 
present — though  never  absolute — is  the  law  of  all  life.  It  is  the 
diversity  asserting  itself  in  the  identity,  though  continuity  be 
preserved.  The  "is"  is  always  running  into  "the  is  to  be."  The 
new  is  always  taking  the  place  of  the  old,  but  only  as  it  grows 
out  of  the  old,  and  fulfills  it — fills  it  so  full  that  "the  new  wine 
bursts  the  old  bottles."  It  is  a  movement  from  within  that  is 
essentially  one  of  self-development.  It  is  a  practical  recogni- 
tion, in  a  word,  of  the  finiteness  of  the  finite  and  of  its  imma- 
nence in  the  infinite.  It  is  the  gradual  conformation  of 
everything  to  its  type  or  kind.  It  is  never  a  mechanical  develop- 
ment, of  which  the  lower  is  the  cause.  The  rather,  too,  it  is  a 
pull  rather  than  a  push  that  effects  the  elevation.  The  cause 
is  teleological.  It  is  the  end,  the  good  sought  by  the  lower,  that 
draws.  And  this,  traced  to  the  end  of  the  dialectic,  is  the  old 
doctrine  of  Philosophy — Plato's  Good,  and,  more  concretely,  the 
Christian  doctrine  of  Divine  grace.     Man  can  no  more 

"Erect  himself  above  himself" 
than  Miinchhausen  could  pull  himself  out  of  the  mire  by  his 
own  cue.    The  evolution  of  man  is  not  a  mere  unfolding  of 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY  39 

what  was  really  in  the  lower  form,  out  of  which  he  has  been  de- 
ft;    veloped. 

"A  spark  disturbs  our  clod." 

In  man  there  is  a  greater  than  man,  that  urges  upward.  It 
is  this  immanent  impulse  to  rationality  in  life  and  thought  that 
is  the  ultimate  cause  of  any  change  being  a  progress  instead  a 
retrogression.  Progress  can  only  mean  movement  towards  an 
end.  The  good  moves  us  by  ideals  that  are  better  and  better, 
nearer  approximations  to  The  Best — ^the  Absolute  Good — God. 

But  such  impulse  to  progress  in  morality  means  the  relativity 
of  conventional  morals!  Yes.  "New  occasions  teach  new 
duties.  Time  makes  ancient  good  uncouth."  Yes,  and  the 
perfect  and  full  form  has  never  yet  been  realized  on  earth  except 
in  the  God-man,  Christ  Jesus.  It  is  this  imperfection  of  any 
existing  status  quo  in  society,  the  state  and  the  church,  that  is 
the  dialectic  to  higher  forms.  Yes,  we  have  transcended  the 
standpoint  of  absolute  conformity  to  conventional  morality. 
But  we  have  also 

(fc)  Transcended  the  standpoint  of  morality  itself.  That 
standpoint  is  the  interaction  of  the  good  will  and  good  forms  for 
the  good  will.  Authorities  are  the  objective  forms  of  the  good, 
which  the  good  will  must  will  to  be  good.  Service  is  a  right  as 
well  as  a  duty.     Service  is  freedom.    Ich  diene  dasz  Ich  bin. 

And  yet  the  same  dialectic  of  non-conformity  that  drives  or 
lures  us  from  one  form  of  any  moral  organism  to  a  higher  form, 
also  impels  us  to  transcend  this  whole  sphere  of  the  good  will 
and  of  conformity  to  conventional  morality.  For,  at  best,  it  is  a 
sphere  of  the  imperfect.  The  imperfection  of  the  finite  not  only 
attaches  to  any  one  particular  form,  it  attaches  to  the  form  of 
morality  itself.  The  will  is  weak.  The  sight  is  blurred.  Duty 
for  duty's  sake  becomes  an  abstraction,  and  the  soul  faints  in  its 
fruitless  efforts  at  self-salvation.  Not  only  is  the  status  quo  of 
any  institution  in  an  unstable  equilibrium;  not  only  is  every 
time  out  of  joint  and  every  age  an  age  of  transition,  in  progres- 


40  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

sive  morality,  but  morality  itself  is  always  out  of  joint,  and  its 
immanent  dialectic  forces  to  religion. 

First,  then,  we  find  that  not  only  the  best  convential  moral- 
ity implies  a  better,  but  also  that  even  the  best  of  morality 
implies  a  discord  in  man's  nature — a  discord  between  the  "is" 
and  "ought  to  be."  There  is  this  in  the  individual.  Put  in 
religious  language  it  is  the  strife  between  the  old  man  and  the 
new  man.  In  morality,  it  is  that  between  the  lower  and  the 
higher  self,  or  that  between  the  different  "mes"  in  the  indi- 
vidual. Then  there  is  the  discord  between  his  social  morality 
and  the  "ought  to  be."  Conformity  is  never  realized  by  the 
individual,  and  the  "ought  to  be"  is  never  actualized  in  any 
moral  organism  of  which  he  is  a  member.  At  best,  one  is  a  frag- 
ment, and  the  institutions  themselves  are  fragments  of  The 
Best.  Conforming  membership  in  a  good  institution  is  never 
perfect  and  the  institution  of  which  one  is  a  conforming  mem- 
ber, is  itself  imperfect.  Moral  pathology  is  common,  then,  to 
both  members  and  organisms.  The  good  will  in  both  is  also 
never  quite  good.^ 

Again,  even  if  morality  could  heal  this  breach,  it  would  not 
be  the  full  realization  or  freedom  of  man.  He  has  needs,  tastes, 
desires,  capacities  beyond  the  sphere  of  morality  as  such.  Art 
and  religion  and  philosophy  have  a  super-morality  function  in 
the  fulfillment  of  man's  capacities.  Satisfaction,  self-realiza- 
tion, full  freedom  then  cannot  be  had  in  the  sphere  of  mere  secu- 
lar morality  at  its  best. 

What  solution  then  can  there  be  of  this  perpetual  discord  in 
man's  nature,  of  the  infinite  within  him  trying  to  satisfy  itself 
with  the  finite  ?  What  are  the  historical  forms  of  a  super-moral 
fulfillment  of  man's  capacities?  Art,  religion  and  philosophy 
are  the  three  spheres  in  which  the  contradiction  passes  in  music 

*  Kant's  classical  assertion,  "Nothing  in  the  world,  or  even  outside  of 
it,  can  possibly  be  regarded  as  absolutely  good,  but  a  good  will,"  is  soon 
followed  by  the  acknowledgment  that  no  instance  of  such  a  purely  moral 
good  will  is  to  be  found.    Cf.  Metaphysic  of  Ethics,  sections  I  and  II. 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY  41 

out  of  sight.  Here  we  are  concerned  only  with  reUgion  as  most 
immediately  and  generally  the  form  of  the  solution  of  the  dis- 
cord. We  need  not  debate  the  question,  as  to  the  historical 
priority  of  morality  or  religion.  We  are  concerned  with  the 
dialectical  transition  of  unfulfilled  morality  into  religion  as  the 
fulfillment  of  that  yearning  for  perfection  that  is  always  an 
"ought  to  be"  instead  of  an  "is"  in  man's  experience. 

When  we  speak  of  duties  towards  God,  we  have  really 
passed  beyond  the  sphere  of  morality  as  such.  But  in  the  ful- 
fillment of  these  duties  towards  God  we  have  not  passed  beyond 
the  sphere  of  self-realization  or  freedom.  Nor,  indeed,  have  we 
passed  out  of  the  sphere  of  morality — even  of  secular  morality — 
except  in  a  way  that  makes  return  to  it  with  renewed  power  of 
fulfillment.  Religion,  like  art  and  philosophy,  offers  itself  as 
a  state  of  consciousness  where  the  "ought  to  be"  is.  It  gives 
fruition  for  struggle.  For  the  constant  failure  of  practical  life 
and  for  the  transient  transcendence  of  art,  it  offers  conviction  of 
assured  temporary  and  final  fulfillment.  The  ideal  of  morality 
is  only  progressively  fulfilled,  and  the  strongest  human  spirit 
faints  and  fails  in  the  struggle. 

The  ideal  of  religion  is  realized  here  and  now.  The  com- 
plete surrender  of  the  will  to  God,  or  God's  full  grace  to  man,  so 
that  at-one-ment  is  an  accomplished  fact  in  the  consciousness, 
is  the  very  essence  of  all  religions.  The  sense  of  dependence 
upon  God  becomes  the  sense  of  independence  in  God.  It  is  no 
longer  I, — the  poor  imperfect  finite,  that  live,  but  God  that 
liveth  in  me.  I  am  emptied  of  self  and  yet  fulfilled  with  His 
fullness.  I  am  "complete  in  Him."  Religion,  psyschologically 
and  historically,  like  morality,  is  founded  upon,  and  springs  out 
of,  the  discord  between  the  "ought  to  be"  and  the  "is."  In  re- 
ligious language  this  discord  is  called  sinfulness,  which  the 
Westminster  Catechism  defines  as  "want  of  conformity  unto  or 
transgression  of  the  law  of  God."  Religion  heals  this  schism 
between  the  sinner  and  his  God.  The  atonement  is  the  one 
word  that  expresses  the  at-one-ment  between  God  and  man 


42  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

wrought  in  the  religious  consciousness,  and  "peace,  perfect 
peace"  is  given  for  the  "peace-less  peace  below"  of  mere  moral- 
ity. 

For  the  religious  man's  consciousness,  there  is  a  perfectly 
realized  form  of  the  good.  God  is  perfect  and  God  is  real — the 
Ens  realissimiim,  whereas  we  found  in  morality  no  such  form 
of  authority — only  passing  shadows  of  fitful  ideals  that,  alone, 
lead  to  despair.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  the  good-will  is  good, 
through  God's  grace.  Such  is  the  ideal  of  religion.  It  tran- 
scends and  fulfills  morality.  This  is  done  absolutely  for  the  re- 
ligious man  in  the  atonement  wrought  by  Christ,  and  in  the  Holy 
Communion,  as  the  actual  conscious  realizing  of  this  atonement. 
Moreover  it  is  also  done  progressively  in  his  secular  life,  with 
an  assured  conviction  that  the  temporal  progress  is  to  have  an 
eternal  fulfillment.  It  is  done  symbolically  and  sacramentally 
in  the  Eucharist.  Religion  offers  a  present  beatitude  and  the 
assurance  of  a  final  beatitude.  Between  these  two  beatitudes 
lies  the  realm  of  man  in  the  secular — the  practical  task  morality. 
But  even  this  is  transformed  into  religious  morality.  Progress 
becomes  progress  within  the  perfect.  Our  life  is  hid  with 
Christ  in  God,  and  our  faith  counted  to  us  for  righteousness. 
We  are  complete  in  Him.  Our  life  on  earth  goes  on  in  the  ways 
of  morality,  but  with  the  assurance  of  final  victory — of  complete 
practical  fulfillment — perfect  freedom. 

We  may  have  mere  morality,  and  very  high  and  noble  forms 
of  it,  for  a  while,  without  religion,  but  we  cannot  have  real  re- 
ligion without  morality.  But  in  religion,  morality  is  transfused 
and  energized  with  the  conviction  that  one  man  and  God  are 
always  a  majority.  It  is  morality  transformed  into  personal  re- 
lationship with  the  Divine,  in  all  the  mediatorial  functions  of  the 
moral  organisms  of  which  we  are  members  here  on  earth. 
Morality  becomes  the  doing  of  God's  will  on  earth,  as  that  will 
is  expressed  in  all  the  moral  institutions  of  mankind.  The  ex- 
pulsive power  of  a  new  affection,  helps  in  the  conflict  against 
non-conformity.     It  is  the  eternal  corporate  life  in  the  souls  of 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY  43 

believers  that  is  at  work,  conforming  them  to  the  type  to  which 
they  have  been  ''predestinated  to  be  conformed." 

Thus  real  religion  transforms  and  fulfills  morality.  The 
dialectic  of  morality  impels  us  to  religion — to  the  standpoint  of 
conformity  to  God's  will,  in  whatever  way  manifested,  so  that 
"God's  service  is  perfect  freedom. 

But  religion  in  the  heart  of  man,  is  in  the  heart  of  a  man  in 
time  and  space  relations — of  man  on  earth.  Hence  this  felt 
oneness  with  God  comes  through  earthly  mediations.  It  is  by 
means  of  this,  that  and  the  other  mediation  that  God's  grace 
works  the  atonement — the  sense  of  the  discord  and  schism 
healed.  God  was  and  is  in  Christ,  reconciling  the  world  unto 
Himself.  The  sensuous  Christ  is  no  more  on  earth.  Yet 
Christians  believe  in  the  real  presence.  The  sensuous  media- 
tion for  this  real  presence  of  Christ  in  the  heart  of  the  believer  is 
that  of  worship,  or  to  use  the  technical  term,  Cult.  It  is  that 
which  cultivates,  nourishes,  renews  and  strengthens  the  sense 
of  at-one-ment  with  God.  Worship  is  a  giving  and  a  receiving, 
a  giving  up  of  the  imperfect,  sinful  self,  and  a  receiving  of  God. 
It  is  "God  and  the  soul  and  the  soul  and  God  at  one."  Self- 
surrender  and  divine  grace  are  the  elements  that  make  worship 
the  form  of  the  realization  of  the  specifically  religious  con- 
sciousness. Thus  the  Cult  is  the  central  fountain  of  the  re- 
ligious consciousness  of  perfect  peace  and  fulfillment — the  Sab- 
bath of  the  Spirit  that  is  to  abide  through  the  week  days;  the 
"vision  splendid"  by  which  the  religious  man  "is  on  his  way  at- 
tended." 

It  is  indeed  absolutely  esential  that  in  some  way  the  perpetual 
presence  of  the  empirically  absent  Perfect  be  mediated  to  those 
who  are  to  be  reconciled  and  filled  with  all  the  fullness  of  God. 
Hence,  for  Christians,  the  Holy  Communion  has  been  the  central 
and  chief  act  of  worship — the  chief  means  for  realizing  the  real 
presence  of  a  bodily  absent  Lord.  The  Church  which  does  not 
make  much  of  worship,  does  not  make  men  very  religious.  It 
does  not  realize  the  religious  ideal.     It  may  run  off  into  the  in- 


44  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

tellectualism  of  orthodoxy  or  of  heterodoxy.  It  may  emphasize 
the  practical  side — drift  into  a  species  of  theological  pragma- 
tism, or  flourish  for  awhile  as  an  "institutional  Church."  It 
may  flourish  for  a  time,  living  a  galvanized  life,  on  the  decaying 
forces  of  a  previous  religious  life.  It  may  "go  about  doing 
good"  in  a  purely  humanitarian  way,  but,  without  the  constant 
nourishing  and  cherishing  of  the  specifically  religious  conscious- 
ness ;  without  making  worship  its  central  function  and  the  cen- 
tral act  of  worship  the  central  function,  it  will  drift  into  the 
realm  of  mere  ethics  or  run  oflF  into  some  species  of  ecclesiastical 
quackery. 

If  religion  is  to  transcend  and  fulfill  morality,  then  let  us 
have  religion.  Let  us  have  the  specific  religious  consciousness, 
and  let  us  use  the  specific  means  thereto.  Reflection  and  expe- 
rience force  us  out  of  the  morality  of  "the  good  will,"  or  duty 
for  duty's  sake,  and  out  of  that  of  mere  conventional  morality. 
We  can  only,  with  a  good  will,  be  conformed  to  the  perfect. 
And  we  can  be  conformed  to  the  perfect,  only  as  we  let  the  per- 
fect have  its  transforming  work  in  us.  In  the  bona  fide 
religious  experience  this  transformation  is  wrought  in  our  con- 
sciousness. It  is  thus  only  in  the  religious  experience  of  man 
that  conformity  to  type  means  real  freedom,  and  that  authority 
and  freedom  cease  to  be  an  antinomy.  At-one-with  God,  His 
service  becomes  man's  perfect  freedom. 


fl>  tf  00,  ta)|)o  act  t^e  aut|)oc  of  prace  anti  lobrc  of  concorD,  in  ftnotol* 
(Use  of  to^om  0tanliet|)  out  eternal  life,  to^oee  sextike  in  perfect 
fceeHom;  OefenO  us  t|)?  |)umble  secbante  in  all  aeisaults  of  ouc 
enemiea;  t|)at  toe,  0ucel?  tcuating  in  t|)H  Uefence,  map  not  fear  t|>e 
potoec  of  an;  aUbecisacieief,  t|)coue|)  t^e  mic^t  of  Jitsua  (Btfiint  ouc 
HocO*    Sbnnu  * 


'  This  is  the  collect  that  Bossuet  declared  to  be  the  most  complete  statement    of 
human  experience  to  be  found. 


CHAPTER  II 

SABATIER,  HARNACK,  AND  LOISY 

"God's  service  is  perfect  freedom."  Yes!  But  what  is 
His  service?  What  are  the  forms,  intellectual,  ethical  and  re- 
ligious in  which  His  will  is  definitely  stated?  If  I  am  only  free 
when  I  am  fulfilling  my  function  as  a  member  of  His  kingdom, 
then  what  is  His  kingdom,  and  what  is  man's  specific  function 
as  a  member  of  that  kingdom?  Concrete  freedom  is  the  high- 
est and  fullest  possible  exercise  of  all  man's  faculties.  God's 
kingdom  on  earth  must  be  comprehensive  enough  to  offer  right 
ways  of  thinking  and  right  ways  of  doing,  as  well  as  right  ways 
of  worshiping.  It  must  be  the  sphere  for  the  cultivation  of  the 
whole  man — the  development  of  all  his  faculties.  If  the  use  of 
all  his  faculties  is  the  service  of  freedom  then  the  old  saying  of 
the  monks  is  true — lahorare  est  orare — to  work  is  to  worship — 
to  work  with  brain  or  brawn  is  a  form  of  self-realization.  Then 
too  Hegel's  saying  is  true :  Das  Denken  ist  auch  wahrer 
Gottesdienst — thinking  is  also  genuine  worship.  Thus  all  nor- 
mal laws  of  conduct  and  of  thought  are  laws  of  God  for  man's 
development.  The  syllogism  first  formulated  by  Aristotle,  as 
well  as  the  Decalogue  formulated  by  Moses,  is  a  form  of  the  Di- 
vine Logic.  Then  too  the  laws  of  good  living  as  discovered  by 
modern  science  are  God's  laws.  In  a  word,  whenever  human 
science  discovers  laws  and  principles  man  is  reading  God's 
thoughts  after  Him — His  kingdom  is  over  all.  His  good-will 
towards  man  is  manifested  in  the  principles  of  every  sphere  of 
man's  activity.  These  principles  are  everywhere  the  forms  of 
divine  service  and  of  man's  freedom.  The  revelation  of  these 
principles — man's  discovery  of  them,   is  progressive,  and  man's 

45 


46  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

progress  into  freedom  is  in  his  loyalty  to  the  fullest  and  highest 
revelation  of  them.  He  is  intellectually  free  when  he  thinks 
according  to  the  laws  of  thought  in  the  highest  form — when  his 
science  is  scientific  and  his  theology  is  philosophical.  He  is 
morally  free  when  his  conduct  conforms  to  the  highest  concep- 
tions of  the  principles  that  make  for  the  well-being  of  mankind. 
He  is  religiously  free  when  worshiping  God  according  to  the 
dictates  of  the  highest  form  of  religion.  Whoso  would  be  a 
man  must  be  a  conformist,  not  to  the  dictates  of  his  own  private, 
peculiar  way  of  thinking  and  acting  and  worshiping,  but  to  rela- 
tively normal  and  catholic  dictates  of  the  wisest  and  best.  Who 
does  otherwise  sins  against  his  own  real  freedom,  even  though 
following  the  dictates  of  his  own  conscience  and  mind  and 
heart.  There  are  always  relatively  orthodox  and  catholic  forms 
of  thought  and  conduct  as  well  as  of  worship,  conformity  to 
which  is  educative  of  the  fullest  activity  and  self-realization  of 
all  of  man's  functions.  Non-conformity  dwarfs  his  develop- 
ment Besides  landing  him,  ofttimes,  in  the  insane  asylum  and 
prison.  The  whole  educational  function  of  the  state  has,  as  its 
object,  the  training  of  its  citizens  in  common  forms  of  thought, 
knowledge  and  conduct.  The  whole  educational  side  of  science 
seeks  to  lead  all  men  to  have  a  common  knowledge  of  its  prin- 
ciples, and  results  to  the  end  that  they  may  apply  them  in  the 
useful  arts.  The  whole  trend  of  the  intellectual  and  ethical 
spheres  is  away  from  private,  peculiar,  subjective,  capricious 
forms.  It  is  seen  that  what  is  wanted  for  the  well-being  of  the 
nation  is  not  a  lot  of  intellectual  and  moral  cranks  or  abnormal- 
ities, but  a  band  of  citizens  with  a  common  language  and  sci- 
ence and  with  good  manners  or  morals.  Common  principles 
and  laws  are  fundamental,  and  conformity  to  them  makes  the 
free  citizens  of  a  good  kingdom  or  republic. 

"The  Sabbath  was  made  for  man  and  not  man  for  the  Sab- 
bath." Every  law  is  primarily  made  for  the  well  being  of  man. 
It  is  man's  right  as  well  as  his  duty  to  conform  to  the  laws  and 
principles,  so  far  as  discovered,  of  every  sphere  of  his  activity. 


SABATIER,  HARNACK  AND  LOISY  47 

It  is  a  service  that  frees,  because  it  develops  him.  It  is  a  form  of 
that  service  which  is  perfect  freedom,  so  far  as  the  intellectual 
and  moral  spheres  are  not  outside  of  God's  kingdom — an  athe- 
istic conceit  harbored  by  few. 

The  welfare  of  the  state  depends  upon  this  common  culture 
of  its  citizens.  May  we  not  go  farther  and  say  that  the  welfare 
of  the  state*also  depends  upon  the  religion  of  its  people  ?  Surely 
history  teaches  this  lesson.  Psychologically  man  is  by  nature 
a  religious  being — incurably  so.  Historically  this  is  true,  and 
moreover  it  is  true  that  the  disposition  or  spirit  of  a  people  has 
always  been  largely  formed  by  its  religion.  And  the  disposition 
of  a  people  begets  that  loyalty  which  is  the  stanchest  support 
of  the  state  and  its  civilizing  institutions.  And  yet  to-day,  we 
find  that  it  is  chiefly  in  the  religious  sphere  that  authority  and 
conformity  are  supposed  to  be  inconsistent  with  freedom.  It 
may  be  well  for  the  state  to  guarantee  religious  liberty,  but  this 
only  means  that  it  prescribes  no  form  of  religion  for  its  citizens. 
It  does  not  mean  that  they  can  be  good  citizens  without  con- 
formity to  some  form  of  religion.  The  state  guarantees  its  cit- 
zens  the  right  to  choose  their  own  form  of  worshiping  God.  But 
no  state  can  safely  guarantee  all  its  citizens  the  right  to  be  irre- 
ligious. And  no  historical  form  of  religion  ever  did  or  ever  can 
guarantee  its  members  individual  license  of  non-conformity  at 
pleasure.  And  yet  we  find  both  friends  and  enemies  of  religion 
crying  out  to-day  against  all  authority  in  religion  as  inconsistent 
with  spiritual  religion.  Let  us  then  carry  this  question  of  au- 
thority and  conformity  and  freedom  into  the  religious  realm. 

We  may  do  this  by  a  reference  to  the  two  most  notable 
volumes  on  religion  that  have  very  recently  been  published  in 
France.  The  first  one  is  that  of  Auguste  Sabatier^  which  has 
been  translated  into  English  under  the  title  of  Religions  of  Au- 
thority and  the  Religion  of  the  Spirit. 

The  second^  is  that  of  Alfred  Loisy,  L'£vangile  et  L'JEglise. 

*  Les  Religions  d'autorite  et  la  Religion  de  V esprit. 
*L' Evangile  et  L'    glise,  Deuxieme  edition,  1903. 


48  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

Of  this  there  has  not  been  a  translation  made  though  doubtless 
the  mere  fact  of  its  having  been  placed  upon  the  Index  Li- 
brorutn  Prohibitortim  will  guarantee  a  speedy  rendering  of  it 
into  English^.  Apart  from  this  fact  it  certainly  deserves  to  be 
translated  for  its  own  merits. 

Both  of  these  volumes  are  written  in  defense  of  Christianity : 
Sabatier's  for  a  minimized  form  of  subjective  religion  in  the 
soul  of  the  individual,  and  Loisy's  for  a  maximized  form  of  ob- 
jective, institutional  or  ecclesiastical  religion.  Both  are  con- 
scious of  the  struggle  of  Christianity  with  the  new  learning. 
Both  of  them  are  fully  abreast  with  modern  culture — children 
of  the  twentieth  century — accepting  even  more  than  the  assured 
results  of  modern  science,  and  of  Biblical  and  historical  criti- 
cism. Both  of  them  find  it  to  be  "a  psychological  necessity  for 
each  believer  to  bring  his  inner  religious  consciousness  into  har- 
mony with  his  general  culture" — the  religious  consciousness  of 
the  one  being  that  of  a  Unitarian  and  the  other  that  of  a  Roman 
Catholic.  Both  are  alike  in  using  the  historical  method  in  their 
study  of  the  origins  and  transformations  of  Christianity. 
Finally  both  are  Kantian  agnostics,  denying  the  possibility  of 
knowledge  in  the  realm  of  religion.  Sabatier  says  :  "Scientific 
certitude  has  as  its  basis  intellectual  evidence.  Religious  certi- 
tude has  for  its  foundation  the  feeling  of  subjective  life  or  moral 
evidence."^ 

Loisy's  foundation  is  also  of  faith  and  not  of  knowledge. 
But  with  him  it  is  not  the  faith  in  the  heart  of  the  individual, 
but  the  social,  corporate  faith  of  the  religious  community,  which 
is  authoritative  for  the  individual's  belief.  But  both  alike  dis- 
claim any  human  capacity  for  intellectual  knowledge  of  religious 
beliefs.  Both  too  are  alike  in  finding  a  very  exiguous  remnant 
of  historical  data  in  the  New  Testament.     Here  all  likeness 

*  Since  writing  this  chapter  there  has  been  a  translation  of  the  work 
published  by  Charles  Scribner's  Sons. 

*  Sabatier's  Outlines  of  a  Philosophy  of  Religion,  p.  312. 


SABATIER,  HARNACK  AND  LOISY  49 

ceases,  and  we  find  two  antipodal  views  of  what  Christianity  is, 
that  is  to  be  defended. 

Loisy  defends  what  Sabatier  rejects.  The  title  of  Sabatier's 
volume  is  a  dogmatic  denial  of  spirituality  to  any  religion  of 
authority.  He  claims  that  authority  poisons  religion,  while 
Loisy  holds  that  authority  promotes  it.  Sabatier  stands  for  sub- 
jective individualism  in  religion ;  Loisy  for  the  social  form  of 
religion  as  educative  of  the  individual.  It  is  any  authority  no 
religion  versus  no  authority  no  religion.  Loisy  defends  the 
historical  Christianity  of  the  Church  of  Rome,  Sabatier  defends 
the  religion  that  never  had,  and  never  can  take,  authoritative 
institutional  form. 

Both  trace  in  identical  terms  the  historical  transformations 
of  Christianity,  but  give  most  diverse  interpretations  of  these 
changes.  Sabatier  interprets  them  as  lapses  from  Christianity, 
Loisy  as  developments  of  it.  Sabatier  faults  the  Christianity  of 
all  the  churches,  Loisy  defends  ecclesiastical  Christianity  in  its 
most  pronounced  form.  Sabatier  denies  that  Christianity  is 
what  it  has  become,  Loisy  identifies  it  with  what  it  has  become  in 
the  Roman  form.  The  one  seeks  the  kernel  without  the  husk, 
the  soul  without  the  body,  the  essence  without  its  form;  the 
other  comes  perilously  near  identifying  the  kernel  with  the 
husk,  the  spirit  with  the  letter.  The  one  stands  for  non- 
conformity, the  other  for  conformity  in  religion.  The  one 
stands  for  freedom  from  authority,  the  other  for  authority  with 
scant  measure  of  real  freedom.  Neither  of  them  appreciates 
the  concrete  freedom  of  authority. 

In  1897  Professor  Sabatier,  then  Dean  of  the  Faculty  of 
Protestant  Theology  in  the  University  of  Paris,  published  a 
volume  on  The  Outlines  of  a  Philosophy  of  Religion,  which 
was  hailed  as  an  epoch-making  book.  In  fact,  it  covers  nearly 
the  same  ground  and  exhibits  the  same  principles  as  his  last 
volume — though  in  the  latter  his  total  break  with  any  form  of 
historical  Christianity  is  more  pronounced.  He  gives  up  wholly 
the  evangelical  form  of  Christianity  of  which  he  was  formerly 

-1 


so  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

a  strenuous  defender.  He  gives  up  miracles,  creeds  and  cult — 
every  phase  of  historical  Christianity  that  science,  history  and 
criticism  object  to,  as  belonging  to  the  false  form  of  authorita- 
tive religion.  Still  he  is  religious,  or  has  "the  religion  of  the 
spirit."  The  volume  is  entitled  "Outlines  of  a  Philosophy  of 
Religion,  based  on  Psychology  and  History."  We  find  that  he 
bases  it  only  on  psychology,  and,  in  both  volumes,  declines  to 
base  it  on  history.  "Why  am  I  religious?"  he  asks.  His 
answer  is  "because  I  cannot  help  it  and,  moreover,  humanity  is 
not  less  incurably  religious  than  I  am."  In  a  review  of  this 
first  volume  of  Sabatier  I  said  :* 

"The  whole  volume  partakes  of  the  nature  of  a  personal  con- 
fession." His  sympathy  with  perplexed  souls  is  intense.  He 
himself  has  passed  over  the  whole  via  dolorosa  of  honest,  anxious 
doubters.  What  he  has  to  say  is  not  mere  theory.  It  is 
spiritual  experience.  Hence  the  captivating  warmth  and  con- 
viction that  gives  tone  to  every  page  of  the  volume 

The  tone  of  this  volume  of  an  octogenarian  has  all  the  vigor 
and  inspiration  and  dauntless  faith  of  a  victorious  leader  in  the 
prime  of  life.  He  sinks  into  devout  meditation,  and  anon  rises 
into  the  victorious  acclaim  of  apostrophe.  He  has  all  the  bril- 
liancy and  clearness  of  style  that  characterize  French  authors. 
And  he  has  that  which  does  not  always  characterize  them — a 
warm,  loving,  and  devout  heart.  He  writes,  confessedly,  as  a 
pectoralist.  It  is  because  of  this  that  he  fails  to  give  us  a 
Philosophy  of  Religion,  as  I  shall  note  in  speaking  of  the  latter 
part  of  his  work.  For  when  he  comes  to  his  theory  of 
knowledge  he  is  confessedly  a  Kantianer — denying  the  possi- 
bility of  knowledge  in  the  realms  of  ethics  and  religion.  The 
solution  he  gives  is,  as  he  says,  a  practical,  and  not  a  theoretical 
one,  and,  therefore  (I  should  say),  not  a  philosophical  one.  He 
says  'Scientific  certitude  has  as  its  basis  intellectual  evidence. 
Religious  certitude  has  for  its  foundation  the  feeling  of  sub- 

*  The  Protestant  Episcopal  Review,  October,  1899. 


SABATIER/HARNACK  AND  LOISY  51 

jective  life,  or  moral  evidence.'^  He  proclaims  an  irreducible 
dualism  between  knowledge  and  faith,  while  asserting  validity 
of  our  confidence  in  the  deliverances  of  them  both. 

It  is  the  confession  of  one  who  is  a  Christian  at  heart — 
the  result  of  his  nurture  and  education  in  the  Evangelical 
Church,  though  now  a  pagan  in  head.  His  first  volume  found  a 
large  sympathetic  public.  It  warmed  and  quickened  the  re- 
ligious life  of  many,  enveloped  in  the  pessimism  coming  from  a 
belief  that  their  modern  culture  doomed  their  religion.  As  I 
have  further  said  "he  regards  religion  as  the  psychological 
optimism  of  the  soul  in  face  of  all  the  facts  that  make  for 
pessimism."  It  is  a  practical,  not  a  theoretical,  answer  of  the 
soul  to  all  evils.  "It  is  a  life-impulse  that  rests  upon  feeling" 
— ^the  feeling  .of  dependence  which  every  man  experiences  in 
respect  to  universal  being.  To  be  religious  is  to  accept  with 
humility  and  confidence*  our  dependence  upon  universal  spirit. 
This,  of  .course,  we  recognize  as  Schleiermacher's  view,  with 
more  emphasis  on  the  element  of  confidence.  'Religion  is  a 
commerce — a  conscious  and  willed  relation  into  which  the  soul, 
in  distress,  enters  with  the  mysterious  power  on  which  it  feels 
that  itself  and  its  destiny  depends.'  It  is  the  prayer  of  the 
heart.  'Prayer  is  religion  in  act,  i.  e.,  real  religion.'  In  an 
appendix,  however,  be  gives  a  more  radical  source  of  religion 
than  that  of  human  distress.  He  finds  in  'his  conscience  the 
■mysterious  and  real  co-existence  of  God.  It  is  this  mystery  out 
of  which  religion  springs  by  an  invincible  necessity.'  Quoting 
from  M.  Charles  Secretan,  he  says:  'In  me  lives  some  one 
greater  than  me.'  In  fact,  it  is  this  concept  of  the  divine  im- 
manence that  he  uses  throughout  his  chapters  on  Revelation, 
Miracle  and  Inspiration,  where  he  makes  sharp  criticism  of 
these  doctrines  when  formulated  from  the  view  point  of  the 
divine  transcendence.  'Religion  is  simply  the  subjective  revela- 
tion of  God  in  man,  and  revelation  is  religion  objective  in  God.* 
Revelation  is  as  universal  as  religion  itself.     No  religion  is  ab- 

'P.  312. 


52  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

solutely  false  or  devoid  of  revelation.  Revelation  is  not  a  com- 
munication of  ultimate,  immutable  dogmas,  but  a  divine  inspira- 
tion, evolving  through  "the  generations  of  mankind  till  it  comes 
to  its  full  fruition  in  the  soul  of  Christ.  The  dogmatic  notion 
of  revelation  is  pagan.  In  its  scholastic  form,  it  is  irreligious 
and  anti-psychological.  Psychologically,  revelation  must  be 
interior,  because  God  has  no  external  form.  It  must  be  self- 
evident,  self-authenticating.  The  only  sufficient  and  infallible 
criterion  of  revelation  is  the  psychological  conviction  of  its  fit- 
ness and  power  to  enter  as  a  permanent  and  constituent  element 
into  the  woof  of  one's  inner  life,  to  enrich,  enfranchise  and 
transform  it  into  a  higher  life.  In  the  soul  of  Jesus  comes  the 
supreme  revelation  of  God — the  revelation  of  the  divine  Father- 
hood in  his  own  filial  consciousness.  This  conscious,  absolute 
relation  to  God  is  the  heart  of  the  dogma  of  the  God-man. 
From  his  criticism  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Holy  Trinity,  we  dis- 
cover again  his  lack  of  appreciation  of  the  intellectual  element 
of  the  Christian  faith — a  minimizing  it  to  a  degree  that  is 
extremely  unphilosophical.  There  is  little  or  nothing  said  of 
the  Christian  doctrine  of  sin  and  of  Christ's  relation  to  mankind 
as  the  Saviour.  It  is  in  the  religious  consciousness  of  Jesus  that 
he  finds  the  essence  and  principle  of  Christianity.  .The  essential 
element  in  Christ's  consciousness  was  the  feeling  of  his  filial  re- 
lation to  God,  and  God's  paternal  relation  to  himself.  This 
feeling,  filial  in  regard  to  God,  fraternal  in  regard  to  man,  is  that 
which  makes  a  man  to  be  a  Christian.  Thus  he  considers  Chris- 
tianity not  as  a  new  doctrine,  but  a  new  positive  force,  springing 
from  the  new  relation  realized  between  the  soul  of  man  and  his 
Father — God.  A  man  is  a  Christian  just  to  the  degree  in  which 
he  experiences  the  same  filial  piety  that  Jesus  felt,  or  as  he  has 
the  religious  consciousness  that  Jesus  had.  There  is  no  attempt 
to  construct  a  scheme  of  salvation ;  no  doctrine  of  the  way  in 
which  the  religion  of  Jesus  is  re-enacted  in  each  believing  disci- 
ple. At  most,  we  are  left  to  surmise  that  it  is  purely  by  word^ 
influence  and  example. 


SABATIER,  HARNACK  AND  LOISY  S3 

Then  follows  a  brilliant  exposition  of  the  three  great  his- 
torical forms  of  Qiristianity — the  Jewish,  Catholic  and  Prot- 
estant. Christianity  exists  to-day  in  the  two  forms  of 
Romanism  and  Protestantism.  The  Christian  seed  is  never 
sown  in  a  neutral  and  empty  soil.  No  soul  and  no  social  state  is 
ever  a  tabula  rasa.  Hence  the  corruptions  of  the  Christian 
principle.  Coming  into  the  culture  and  ideas  and  life  of  the 
Graeco-Roman  empire,  it  necessarily  was  modified — corrupted 
by  its  environment.  The  doctrine,  polity  and  ritual  of  the 
Roman  Church  was  as  much  Pagan  as  Christian.  Romanism 
objectified  and  materialized  the  Christian  principle  into  a  visi- 
ble institution,  deifying  the  Church.  The  author  shows  but 
little  appreciation  of  the  vast  and  deep  work  done  by  the  Roman 
Church  in  evangelizing  the  world.  In  fact,  he  throughout 
minimizes  the  importance  of  doctrine  and  organization — i.  e., 
of  the  churchly  side  of  Christianity,  without  which,  however, 
it  is  truer  to  hold  that  it  would  have  passed,  in  the  dark  ages,  as 
a  dream  in  the  night. 

But  such  was  not  the  mind  of  the  founder  of  Christianity, 
and  such  has  not  been  its  historical  course.  The  visible  Church 
has  been  the  extension  of  the  incarnation  in  the  secular  life  of 
'humanity,  gradually  realizing  the  kingdom  of  God  on  earth. 
At  the  close  of  his  criticism  of  Romanism  he  allows  that  there 
was  always  latent  in  it  some  of  the  power  of  the  Christian  prin- 
ciple. "Protestantism,"  he  says,  "sprang  out  of  Catholicism 
because  it  was  virtually  contained  in  it,"  radical  though  the  op- 
position is  between  the  two.  Protestantism  brings  back  Chris- 
tianity from  the  exterior  to  the  interior.  Christianity  again 
becomes  a  principle  of  subjective  inspiration.  But,  he  says, 
there  lurks  a  germ  of  Romanism  in  Protestantism.  This  is  seen 
when  Protestant  churches  set  up  certain  confessions  of  faith  as 
infallible,  ultimate  statements  of  Christianity.  Protestantism 
is  not  doctrine,  nor  is  it  a  church,  nor  can  it  be  imprisoned  in  any 
definite  form.  It  is  a  new  assertion  of  the  immanent  divine  life 
in  the  soul.    The  filial  sense  of  God's  immediate  active  presence 


54  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

in  the  heart  is  the  essence  of  Protestantism,  as  it  was  the  essence 
of  the  religion  of  Jesus.  In  all  this,  it  is  but  fair  to  say  that  he 
is  presenting  his  ideal  of  what  Protestantism  ought  to  be,  rather 
than  Protestantism  as  it  has  been  and  is,  historically.  Most 
Protestants  will  demur  to  his  ideal ;  and  most  Romanists  have  a 
right  to  object  to  his  presenting  rather  the  imperfections  of  an 
actually  existing  church  than  the  ideal  principle  that  is  working 
in  and  through  that  form  of  Christianity. 

Again,  most  Protestants  will  demur  to  much  that  he  says 
in  Book  III  on  the  nature  and  function  of  dogma.  Of  the  three 
elements  in  dogma — the  religious,  the  intellectual,  and  the 
authoritative— only  the  first  is  of  continuous  worth  and  validity. 
Only  an  infallible  Church  can  set  up  immutable  dogmas.  Prot- 
estantism falls  into  a  radical  contradiction  with  its  own  principle 
when  it  attempts  this.  And  yet  dogma  is  necessary,  because  it 
is  the  natural  expression  of  life.  But  life  is  ever  changing, 
hence  dogma  is  even  mutable.  It  is  essential  to  religion,  but  its 
office  IS  pedagogic.  It  belongs  not  in  the  intellectual  but  in  the 
practical  sphere.  It  is  the  religious  element  in  dogma  that  is 
valuable.  The  intellectual  form  is  a  mere  symbol  to  awaken 
and  nourish  the  divine  life.  It  must  never  be  taken  as  a  state- 
ment of  accurate,  intellectual  knowledge.  For  an  objective 
knowledge  of  divine,  spiritual  facts  is  impossible.  It  is  the 
error  of  orthodoxy  to  make  dogmas  the  essence  of  Christianity. 
This  error  of  orthodoxy  is  essentially  rationalistic — a  belief  that 
we  can  have  intellectual  knowledge  of  spiritual  realities.  But 
our  author  is  persistently  and  heartily  a  pectoralist  rather  than 
an  intellectualist.  He  does  not  believe  with  Hegel  that  thinking 
is  also  a  true  religious  act,  nor  that  we  can  ever  adequately  think 
our  religion,  or  have  what  is  known  as  a  Philosophy  of  Religion. 

And  this  brings  me  to  again  notice  briefly  his  really  agnos- 
tic view  as  to  knowledge.  He  accepts  Kant's  dualism  between 
the  intellectual  and  moral  natures  of  man.  Our  faculty  of  cog- 
nition is  limited  to  the  sensuous  world.  We  have  no  intellectual 
organ  for  knowing  the  metaphysical,  the  spiritual,  the  real.     In- 


SABATIER,  HARNACK  AND  LOISY  55 

tellectual  knowledge  or  science  is,  he  affirms,  opposed  to  the  dic- 
tates of  the  heart  and  conscience.  It  can  recognize  personality 
neither  in  man,  nor  in  the  principle  of  the  universe.  But  heart 
and  consciene  cry  out  against  this  dictum  of  knowledge.  The 
solution  cannot  be  an  intellectual  one.  It  must  be  the  practical 
one  of  the  spirit's  own  assertion  of  the  reality  and  worth  of  per- 
sonality. This  is  made  not  by  the  intellect,  but  by  the  heart  and 
conscience. 

The  sovereignty  of  personality — ^human  and  divine — is  the 
answer  of  the  heart  given  by  religion — constituting  religion. 

The  author  affirms*  that  we  thus  have  two  orders  of  con- 
viction: first,  the  objective  intellectual  one  of  science;  second, 
the  subjective  pectoral  one  of  heart  and  conscience.  These  two 
are  irreducible.  Religion  and  morality  are  not  reconciled  with 
science,  nor  science  with  religion  and  morality.  But  as  science 
is  based  on  confidence  of  mind  in  itself,  so  religion  is  based  on 
confidence  of  heart  in  itself.  The  legitimacy  of  the  confidence 
of  the  one  is  as  good  as  that  of  the  other.^  These  two  orders  of 
conviction  must  never  be  confounded.  Their  results  will 
always  remain  heterogeneous.  Religious  and  moral  truth  are 
known,  he  says,  by  a  subjective  act  of  what  Pascal  calls  the 
heart.  The  intellect  can  know  nothing  about  them,  any  more 
than  the  heart  can  about  the  truths  of  science.  'Science  is  not 
more  sure  of  its  object  than  moral  or  religious  faith  is  of  its 
own.  But  it  is  sure  in  a  different  way.  Scientific  certitude  has 
at  its  basis  intellectual  evidence.  Religious  certitude  has  for  its 
foundation  the  feeling  of  subjective  life,  or  moral  evidence. 
The  one  satisfies  the  intellect,  the  other  the  soul.  In  religious 
knowledge  the  intellectual  demonstration  has  no  value  beyond 
its  use  to  nurture  the  soul.'^  Demonstrations  of  the  existence 
of  the  soul  and  God  are  ineffective  to  those  who  have  no  piety ; 
for  those  who  have,  they  are  superfluous  and  impossible.  Thus 
he  makes  a  clear  and  frank  confession  of  agnosticism  in  regard 

'  P.  300. 
'P.  312. 


S6  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

to  religion  and  ethics,  and  resolutely  discards  the  'philosophy  of 
logical  unity.'^  This  logically  salto  mortale  is  religiously  a  salto 
vitale  to  God.  The  subjective  mind — the  heart — affirms  what 
the  mind — the  intellect — denies.  It  is  an  act  of  trust,  not  an  in- 
tellectual demonstration,  that  asserts  the  sovereignty  of  the 
human  spirit  resting  in  the  divine  spirit.  We  agree  with  all 
that  he  says  as  to  the  peculiarly  pectoral  character  of  religion, 
only  faulting  his  Kantian  epistemology,  which  makes  it  impos- 
sible for  the  intellect  to  have  knowledge  of  divine  things.  Man 
is  a  being  who  thinks  all  his  experience,  and  perforce  must  think 
his  religious  experience.  Thought  can  make  the  ascent  to  the 
Divine.  Rational  knowledge  of  the  pectoral  religious  is  pos- 
sible and  necessary.  The  real  is  the  rational.  Religious  expe- 
rience is  real,  and  it  is  an  imperative  upon  the  mind  to  see  its 
rationality. 

In  criticising  the  standpoint  of  Sabatier  we  may  include 
Harnack^  and  the  whole  Ritschlian  school.  Harnack  is  perhaps 
the  most  radical  of  Ritschlians.  It  would  be  as  presumptuous,  as 
it  would  tedious,  to  state  the  various  conservative  views  within 
the  whole  school.  It  would  be  folly  not  to  recognize  the  positive 
results  of  the  school  in  creating  a  revival  of  the  religious  life. 
But  all  this  must  be  neglected  and  only  the  fundamental  prin- 
ciples be  noted.  The  school  as  a  whole  is  devoutly  religious. 
It  represents  a  wholesome  recall  from  mere  intellectualism  in 
religion  to  the  specifically  religious  life.  But  when  it  proceeds 
to  give  grounds  for  religious  certitude  it  opens  the  way  for  an 
estimation  of  the  validity  of  these  grounds.  Like  Sabatier,  the 
whole  school  adopts  the  Kantian  standpoint  of  intellectual 
agnosticism  in  the  realm  of  religion.  We  cannot  know  God  or 
the  soul.  We  cannot  know  that  Jesus  is  divine.  Knowledge  is 
out  of  the  question  and  always  fails  when  it  is  attempted,  as 
the   history   of   Christian   doctrine    shows.     This    intellectual 

*P.  314. 

'Hamack's  What  is  Christianity,  translation  of  his  Das  Wcsen  des 
Christentums. 


SABATIER,  HARNACK  AND  LOISY  57 

nescience  is  supplemented  by  a  religious  Pragmatism.^  Doc- 
trines are  true  only  so  far  as  they  are  of  worth  to  us.  All 
"helping  ideas"  have  corresponding  realities.  The  idea  of  God 
is  'a  helping  idea."  God  is  real  for  the  heart,  not  for  the  mind. 
That  is,  in  religious  matters  they  make  "judgments  of  value" 
take  the  place  of  judgments  of  existence  in  the  realm  of  knowl- 
edge and  then  turn  round  and  say  that  judgments  of  worth 
{Wertiirteile)  certify  reality  to  us.  They  agree,  then,  with 
Sabatier  in  an  appeal  from  intelligence  to  some  other  form  of 
experience  for  certitude  in  religious  experience.  They  agree, 
too,  with  him  in  decrying  authority  in  doctrine  and  cult,  and  in 
falling  back  to  the  standpoint  of  immediacy  of  feeling  in  the 
soul  of  the  individual.  As  Harnack  says :  "It  is  God  and  the 
soul  and  the  soul  and  God  that  is  the  whole  religion."  They 
agree  too  with  him  in  his  cry,  back  from  the  Christianity  of 
Creed  and  Church  to  the  personal  religion  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
that,  by  contagious  sentiment,  we  may  have  the  same  sense  of 
filial  relation  with  God  that  he  had.     That  alone  is  true  religion. 

Professor  Harnack,  doubtless,  represents  the  most  radical 
form  of  Ritschlianism — his  brilliant  historical  scholarship  lead- 
ing further  along  the  same  anti-ecclesiastical  line  of  the  whole 
school. 

His  volume  created  the  same  furore  in  Germany  that 
Sabatier's  did  in  France.  In  fact  both  of  them  have  found  a 
large  reading  in  England  and  America  also.  Harnack's  volume 
lacks  some  of  the  personal  interest  and  religious  warmth  of 
Sabatier's.  But  it  is  just  as  brilliant  and  attractive.  It  con- 
sists of  sixteen  lectures  given  before  a  large  University  audience 
in  Berlin  in  1899- 1900.  '^he  wonderful  interest  excited  by  both 
these  books  serves  to  show  what  a  large  part  of  cultivated  people 
are  still  deeply  interested  in  religion.  What  is  Christianity? 
What  is  the  abiding  essence  (Wesen)  of  the  Christian  religion  ? 
Is  it  not  something  that  may  still  be  ours,  in  spite  of  the  down- 

*  Cf.  Appendix,  note  7. 


58  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

fall  of  church  and  creed  and  cult  before  the  bar  of  modern  cul- 
ture ?     Such  are  the  questions  of  Harnack  as  well  as  Sabatier. 

When  we  think  of  it,  it  does  seem  like  a  strangely  belated 
inquiry  to  ask  what  Christianity  is,  after  its  nineteen  centuries 
of  vigorous,  world-wide  existence.  But  it  is  not  so  strange 
when  we  remember  that  for  these  authors  and  for  a  very  large 
portion  of  cultivated  people,  historical  Christianity  is  an  intel- 
lectually discredited  religion.  But  as  mankind  is  incurably 
religious,  the  leaders  must  either  invent  a  new  religion  or  reform 
the  old  one.  The  attempt  must  now  be  made  to  find  an  inmost 
abiding  kernel,  after  all  the  husks  of  historical  Christianity  have 
been  torn  away.  They  are  religious.  They  want  to  be  Chris- 
tians— all  their  religious  life  has  been  nurtured  in  Christianity, 
and  they  are  loth  to  give  it  up.  Hence  their  earnest  endeavor  to 
find  a  way  of  faith  in  the  midst  of  their  shipwreck  of  belief. 
They  are  Christian  mystics,  afflicted  with  all  the  ailments  pe- 
culiar to  modern  culture,  and  yet  they  turn  to  Jesus — hero- 
worshipers  in  spite  of  the  marring  of  his  divinely  human  face 
by  the  Christian  Church.  They  will  be  Christians  in  spite  of 
the  Church.  They  will  form  an  ecclesiola  in  ecclesia,  a 
"righteous  remnant"  of  those  who  have  "the  religion  of  the 
spirit,"  freed  from  the  incredulous  superstitions  of  any  form  of 
a  "religion  of  authority." 

A  brief  sketch  of  some  of  the  views  of  Sabatier's  last 
volume  and  of  Professor  Harnack's  lectures  may  well  precede  a 
criticism  of  their  fundamental  principles.  We  have  already 
stated  the  views  of  Sabatier's  first  volume.  He  devotes  two- 
thirds  of  his  second  volume  to  the  most  drastic  criticism  of  all 
forms  of  historical  Christianity  as  being  forms  of  "religions  of 
authority,"  irreconcilable  with  "the  religion  of  the  spirit."  We 
may  omit  his  criticism  of  the  Roman  Catholic  form,  as  it  is 
practically  identical  with  that  of  Harnack,  which  we  shall  give 
further  on.  Having  torn  the  rags  from  Romanism  and  ex- 
hibited an  unspiritual  skeleton,  he  turns  his  criticism  upon  the 
authoritative  forms  of  Protestantism.     The  Pope  of  Rome  is 


SABATIER,  HARNACK  AND  LOISY  S9 

shorn  of  his  illegitimate  authority.  And  now  "the  paper  pope 
of  Protestants" — ^the  Bible — must  be  deposed  from  the  position 
of  authority  accredited  to  it  by  Bibliolaters.  He  affirms  that 
Protestants  have  never  been  true  to  their  principles.  He 
defines  the  Reformation  as  a  revolt  from  all  externalism  and 
authority  in  religion,  based  upon  the  inward  subjective  expe- 
rience— the  witness  of  the  spirit,  the  confidence  of  the  child  in 
the  Heavenly  Father's  love.  The  ultimate  Protestant  principle 
is  that  of  the  autonomy  of  the  Christian  conscience.  But  "the 
Catholic  principle  survived  in  the  Protestant  churches.  Not 
only  was  the  dogmatic  tradition  of  the  councils  and  Middle 
Ages  maintained,  but  no  one  entertained  a  doubt  that  an  infal- 
lible external  authority  was  necessary.  The  attempt  was  made 
to  constitute  it  by  the  dogma  of  the  infallibility  of  the  Scriptures 
and  on  this  foundation  to  build  up  an  authoritative  theology."^ 
He  holds  that  the  moment  Protestants  framed  an  authoritative 
theology  and  church,  they  departed  from  their  true  principle 
that  the  Bible  is  to  be  interpreted  by  the  individual  reason  and 
conscience.  But,  in  fact,  this  was  the  view  only  of  the  Ana- 
baptist sects.  After  tracing  the  rise  of  authority  in  the  Protes- 
tant churches,  he  compares  it  most  unfavorably  with  the  Catholic 
form  of  authority — both  systems  belonging  to  the  same  family. 
"The  Protestants  were  led  to  establish  the  infallibility  of  Scrip- 
tures along  the  same  path  by  which  the  Catholics  established 
that  of  the  Church."^  "From  whatever  point  of  view  we  exam- 
ine the  two  systems,  the  advantage  is  incontestably  on  the 
Catholic  side."^  The  first  rests  on  a  political,  the  second  on  a 
literary  fiction.  "Both  are  the  fruit  of  an  exaggerated  and  mis- 
understood craving  for  authority,"  And  authority  in  religion  is 
always  an  impertinence.  Then  follows  his  description  of  the 
dissolution  of  the  Protestant  authority,  through  the  progress  of 
Biblical  criticism  and  the  historical  method.     "The  Protestant 

^P.  154 
'  P.  185. 
•P.  186. 


6o  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

system  of  authority  has  broken  down  forever"  while  the 
Catholic  system  has  established  and  completed  itself  by  the 
Vatican  decree — "one  of  the  grandest  political  spectacles  extend- 
ing its  rule  over  more  than  one-third  of  Christendom."  Hence 
in  their  final  struggle  "there  is  no  other  choice  for  Protestants 
but  either  to  turn  back  again  to  the  Roman  Catholic  Church 
whence  they  once  came  out,  or  to  rise  joyously  and  vigorously 
from  the  religion  of  the  letter  to  the  religion  of  the  spirit."^ 
Both  these  forms  of  authoritative  religion — the  pagan  and  the 
Jewish  periods  of  Christianity  are  now  broken  and  "the  truly 
Christian  period  is  about  to  begin.  The  religion  of  the  priest- 
hood and  the  religion  of  the  letter  are  outworn  and  dying  before 
our  eyes,  making  way  for  the  religion  of  the  Spirit."^  It  is  like 
a  captive  bird  that  may  tremble  as  it  sees  its  cage  falling  to 
pieces  around  it.  But  it  is  now  singing  over  the  fragments,  con- 
scious of  its  wings,  and  of  liberty  to  use  them.  The  third  part 
of  the  volume  is  devoted  to  this  "new  religion"  of  the  Spirit, 
which  he  characterizes  as  "the  religious  relation  realized  in  pure 
spirituality."  And  this  is  only  the  primitive  gospel  in  its  reality. 
For  the  gospel  in  its  very  principle  implied  the  abrogation  of  re- 
ligions of  authority.^  The  heart  of  the  gospel  is  the  conscious- 
ness of  a  filial  relation  between  child  and  father.  To  be  a 
Christian  is  to  live  over  within  ourselves,  the  inner  spiritual  life 
of  Christ — to  feel  the  presence  of  a  Father,  and  the  reality  of  our 
filial  relation  to  Him  just  as  Christ  felt  this  in  himself.  Jesus 
is  only  the  soul  of  the  race  in  whom  this  consciousness  of  filial 
relation  to  the  Father  first  came  to  full  realization.  And  the 
spirit  of  divine  sonship,  learned  from  Jesus,  is  the  essence  of  the 
religion  of  the  spirit.  "Jesus  liberated  his  disciples'  consciences 
equally  with  his  own."  He  claimed  no  authority  over  them. 
His  authority  is  only  that  of  the  revelation  of  the  Father.  Jesus 
taught  no  dogmas,  but  a  new  religious  sentiment  was  aroused 

'  P.  253. 
'  P.  281. 
*  P.  282. 


SABATIER,  HARNACK  AND  LOISY  6i 

by  his  life  among  men.  "There  was  a  contagious  sentiment  of 
an  entirely  new  relation — a  filial  relation  to  God." 

"Jesusolatry,  that  is,  the  separate  worship  of  the  man  Jesus, 
is,  so  far  as  the  Christian  religion  is  concerned,  as  truly  idol- 
atry as  the  adoration  of  the  virgin  and  the  saints.  It  is  as  re- 
pugnant to  Protestant  piety,  in  its  deep  instinctive  tendency,  as 
to  the  primitive  gospel.  Jesus  never  claimed  worship  for  him- 
self."^ He  discusses  and  thus  dismisses  the  authority  of  Jesus 
as  it  has  been  held  by  Catholics  and  Protestants  alike.  In  fine, 
as  he  would  make  every  religious  man  his  own  Moses,  so  would 
he  make  him  his  own  Jesus.  We  are  Christians  just  so  far  as 
we  reproduce  his  personal  piety  in  us.  "But,"  he  asks,  "does 
not  the  person  of  Jesus  occupy  a  central  place  in  his  gospel?" 
With  some  circumlocution  he  answers  No!     "The  orthodox 

doctrine  of  the  Divinity  of  Christ  distorts  the  true  gospel 

In  the  dogma  of  the  Trinity  there  is  a  root  of  paganism."^  All 
such  doctrines  are  "positively  outside  of  Christianity  and  out- 
side of  the  gospel  of  salvation.  Jesus  never  demanded  such 
adoration  from  his  disciples."  "Jesus  simply  tried  to  modify 
and  renew  the  religious  consciousness  of  his  disciples  by  impart- 
ing to  them  the  purely  religious  and  moral  content  of  his  own 
consciousness."^  Yet  on  a  previous  page  he  speaks  of  the  sense 
of  sin  and  says  that  the  simple  and  profound  story  of  the 
prodigal  son  is  the  whole  gospel.  He  speaks  of  all  conceptions 
of  the  Divinity  of  Christ  as  "pagan  imaginings,  more  worthy  of 
worshipers  on  Olympus  than  of  those  on  Tabor."  The  re- 
ligion of  the  spirit  has  to  guard  itself  against  paganism  (i.  e., 
sacramentalism)  by  critical  symbolism,  and  against  the  Jewish 
error  (of  orthodoxy)  by  fideism.  "The  religion  of  the  spirit 
(thus)  embodies  the  living  practical  synthesis  of  critical  sym- 
bolism and  -fideism."*    We  need  not  even  accept  all  the  personal 

^  P.  294. 
'  P.  330. 
'  P-  331. 
*  P.  339- 


62  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

views  of  Jesus.  The  thing  is  to  share  his  filial  piety.  I  have 
referred  to  the  warm  personal  enthusiasm  that  animates  both  of 
Sabatier's  volumes,  making  them  a  sort  of  a  confession  of  faith 
of  a  doubting  and  believing  soul.  His  last  paragraph  is 
pathetic.  Speaking  of  his  love  of  philosophical  reflection  he 
says :  "There  is  something  more  urgent,  more  necessary  than 
to  explain  the  experiences  of  piety,  and  that  is  to  make  them. 
At  the  close  of  this  long  effort  of  research  and  meditation,  the 
author  is  not  exempt  from  a  certain  lassitude  of  mind  and  heart ; 
and  he  lays  down  the  pen  with  the  prayer  of  our  old  Corneille :" 

"O  God  of  truth,  whom  only  I  desire, 
Bind  me  to  thee  by  ties  as  strong  as  sweet ; 
I  tire  of  hearing,  of  reading  too  I  tire, 
But  not  of  saying:  Thee  God  alone  I  need." 

The  pathos  is  heightened  by  the  fact  that  he  sought  relief 
from  the  lassitude  by  a  trip  to  Palestine,  leaving  the  command 
that  his  book  must  be  published,  if  anything  happened  to  him 
on  the  journey.  "I  have  work  planned  out  for  two  hundred 
years,"  he  said,  and  yet,  worn  out  by  his  labors,  he  soon  gently 
breathed  away  his  life,  while  praying  "Our  Father  who  art  in 
heaven" — a  Christian  at  heart  though  neither  a  Catholic  nor  a 
Protestant  in  head. 

He  calls  his  new  view  of  Christianity,  "the  Religion  of 
the  spirit,"  symbolo-Fideisnte.  Fideisme  or  faith-ism  is  the  es- 
sence of  Christianity.  He  defines  this  term  to  mean  that  "Sal- 
vation is  by  faith,  independently  of  belief."  Symbolism  desig- 
nates the  merely  parabolical  or  figurate  character  of  all  dogmas. 

Sabatier  finds  a  sort  of  necessity  for  dogmas,  but  denies  all 
elements  of  knowledge  in  them.  Dogmas  must  cease  to  be 
dogmatic.  They  are  only  helpful  symbols  in  a  region  where 
knowledge  is  impossible.  They  are  at  best  but  suggestive 
parables.  "It  would  be  an  illusion  to  believe  that  a  religious 
symbol  represents  God  as  He  really  is,  and  that  its  value  de- 
pends on  the  exactness  with  which  it  represents  Him.  The  true 
content  of  the  symbol  is  entirely  subjective."    We  cannot  know 


SABATIER,  HARNACK  AND  LOISY  63 

God.  Jesus  himself  did  not  know  God.  He  used  the  term 
Father  to  symbolize  the  feeling  of  his  heart  in  relation  to  the 
Great  Unknowable:  Father  is  but  an  imaginative  symbol. 
Dogmas  are  poetry,  not  science. 

His  critical  symbolism  is  the  intellectual  form  that  remains 
after  his  frank  acceptance  of  Kantian  agnosticism.  He  denies 
the  possibility  of  knowledge  in  the  realms  of  ethics  and  religion. 
"Scientific  certitude  has  for  its  basis  intellectual  evidence.  Re- 
ligious certitude  has  for  its  foundation  the  feeling  of  subjective 
life,  or  moral  evidence."  We  cannot  know  God  or  spiritual 
experience.  We  can  only  express  in  symbols  the  feelings  of 
our  hearts.  He  uses  Ritschl's  distinction  between  judgments  of 
existence  and  judgments  of  value  (Werturteile). 

Our  knowledge  of  God  is  only  symbolical.  It  is  a  value- 
judgment  as  to  our  psychological  experience.  All  that  validates 
the  religious  experience  of  Jesus  is  the  response  it  awakens  in 
our  heart.  The  intellect  can  know  nothing  about  this  any 
more  than  the  heart  can  about  the  truth  of  science.  Here  all 
authority  beyond  that  of  the  individual's  feeling  is  out)  of  court. 
Institution  and  doctrine  are  impertinences — pagan  and  Jewish 
corruptions  of  the  pure  gospel. 

The  two  principles  at  the  basis  of  Sabatier's  view  are,  first, 
his  intellectual  agnosticism  and  second,  his  pectoralism — Pectus 
est  quod  Theologum  facit. 

Apart  from  the  warm,  charming  personal  element  and  the 
brilliant,  vivid  and  declamatory  form,  we  have  here  the  solution 
of  a  devoutly  religious  man's  attempt  to  bring  his  "inner  re- 
ligious consciousness  into  harmony  with  his  general  culture,"  in 
science,  history  and  Biblical  criticism.  We  should  note  that  in 
his  first  volume^  he  emphasizes  the  psychological  side  of  religion 
and  then  uses  the  historical  method  to  destroy  the  validity  of  all 
forms  of  institutional  and  doctrinal  Christianity.  Psycholog- 
ically also,  religion  must  be  purely  interior  as  God  has  no 
external  form.  It-  is  the  presence  of  God  in  the  heart.  Quid 
^  Preface,  p.  xv. 


64  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

interius  Deo?  he  asks,  and  quotes  M.  Secretan,  "In  me  lives 
some  one  greater  than  me."  Finally  after  his  drastic  treatment 
of  concrete  religion  in  institutional  and  dogmatic  forms,  we 
have  left  only  this  psychological  feeling,  the  scanty  residuum, 
which  he  terms  "the  Religion  of  the  Spirit,"  the  kernel  without 
the  husk.  Before  noticing  the  unhistoricity  of  his  view  of  re- 
ligion and  criticising  his  standpoint,  we  wish  to  state  briefly  the 
similar  standpoint  and  principles  of  the  Ritschlian  School. 
Details  will  be  unnecessary.  We  can  make  a  composite  photo- 
graph of  the  views  of  Ritschl,  Hermann,  Kaftan,  Bender,  Har- 
nack  and  Paulsen. 

(i)  The  object  of  this  school  is  to  save  religion  from 
scepticism — ^to  find  a  ground  of  certitude  for  religion,  which  will 
be  independent  and  unassailable  by  all  critical,  scientific  and 
philosophical  theories.  This  certitude  is  an  inward  feeling,  the 
impression  which  Christ  makes  upon  the  soul,  that  in  him  God  is 
drawing  nigh  you.  Much  more  stress  is  laid  upon  the  personal 
influence  of  the  historical  Jesus  by  some  of  this  school  than  is 
done  by  Sabatier.  "We  are  compelled  to  say"  (says  Hermann), 
"that  the  existence  of  Jesus  in  our  world  is  that  fact  through 
which  God  so  touches  us  that  He  opens  up  intercourse  with  us." 
Jesus  "finds  us."  Christianity  is  self-evidencing  in  the  expe- 
rience of  the  Christian.  Emphasis  is  laid  upon  the  historical 
Jesus,  though  the  presence  of  legendary  and  non-historical  mat- 
ter in  the  gospels  is  freely  admitted.  Thus  Harnack  says  there 
is  no  historical  proof  of  the  resurrection  of  Jesus.  But  allowing 
all  legendary,  mythical  and  unhistorical  elements  that  criticism 
finds  in  the  gospels,  there  is  still  left  a  historical  Jesus  who 
warms  our  hearts  and  wins  our  reverence  and  leads  us  to  the 
Father.  But  it  is  the  historical  Jesus,  not  the  Christ  of  the 
Church  and  dogma.  What  Jesus  was  before  his  birth,  and 
where  or  what  he  is  now,  are  matters  beyond  our  experience. 
And  Ritschlians  build  only  on  the  immediate  impression  made 
on  us  by  the  historical  Jesus.  Practically  they  give  us  only  the 
picture  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  in  place  of  an  ever  living  and  ever 


SABATIER,  HARNACK  AND  LOISY  65 

present  Christ.  Their  teaching  excludes  all  metaphysical  views 
as  to  the  nature  and  person  of  Christ  as  formulated  in  Christ- 
ology.  Their  cry  is  "back  to  Jesus."  Away  from  the  Christ 
of  the  church  and  the  creeds,  to  the  historical  Jesus,  and  the 
positive  experience  which  the  gospel  portrait  makes  upon  the 
human  soul.  "Theology  without  metaphysic"  is  the  watchword 
of  the  school.  The  bane  of  dogmatic  theology  has  been  its  meta- 
physical interpretation  of  the  person  of  Jesus.  This  must  all  be 
given  up  because, 

(2)  We  have  no  organ  for  knowing  the  supra-sensuous. 
In  philosophy  they  are  agnostic.  Intellectually  they  are  Neo- 
Kantians — denying  the  possibility  of  theoretic  knowledge  of 
God  and  spiritual  realities.  Knowledge  is  confined  to  sensuous, 
time  and  space  realities — the  realm  of  science.  It  cannot  deal 
with  spiritual  realities.  Knowledge- judgments  are  out  of  their 
province  in  religious  matters.  How  then  can  we  have  religious 
certitude,  when  all  theoretic  knowledge  is  denied  ? 

(3)  Here  they  modify  Kant's  Practical  Reason  to  suit  the 
religious  rather  than  the  moral  sphere. 

Judgments  of  value  or  Worth  judgments  (Werturteile) 
are  distinguished  from  judgments  of  existence  as  to  sensuous 
reality  made  by  the  faculty  of  knowledge.  I  know  the  sun  to 
be  what  physics  and  astronomy  tell  me  that  it  is.  But  the  sun 
warms  me.  It  is  good  to  be  warm.  I  judge  the  sun  to  be 
good.  So  critical  history  gives  me  the  historical  phenomenon 
of  Jesus.  But  my  knowledge  of  the  historical  Jesus  makes 
such  an  impression  upon  me,  meets  so  many  of  my  religious 
needs,  that  he  is  of  the  greatest  value  to  me.  I  make  the  value- 
judgment  that  Jesus  is  divine.  All  religious  knowledge  is  of  a 
generically  different  order  from  knowledge  properly  so  called. 
It  is  essentially  faith  rather  than  knowledge.  It  deals  not  with 
objective  or  existential  truth,  but  with  experiences  which  have 
value  for  us  as  religious  beings.  It  belongs  to  the  theoretic 
faculty  to  tell  us  just  what  the  real  historical  person  Jesus  was. 
Bring  this  real  Jesus  before  us  and  we  feel  that  he  is  good, 

5 


66  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

divine,  just  as  we  feel  that  the  sun  is  warm  and  good.  We  do 
not  know  that,  objectively,  Jesus  is  good  and  divine.  The  quali- 
ties we  attribute  to  him  are  expressions  of  what  he  is  to  us,  just 
as  the  brightness  of  the  sun  is,  to  use  Locke's  formula,  only  a 
secondary  instead  of  a  primary  or  objective  property  of  the  sun. 
So  we  believe  in  God  as  Father,  not  because  we  know  Him 
as  such,  but  because  of  a  subjective,  secondary  quality,  inherent 
in  us,  not  in  Him.  We  believe  in  Him  because  it  is  a  "helping 
idea,"  as  they  term  it.  It  is  good  for  us  to  believe  in  God  as  a 
Father,  as  Jesus  did,  because  it  helps  us,  as  it  helped  him,  to  lead 
a  beautiful  spiritual  life.  If  we  said  that  we  knew  God,  science 
would  sweep  the  heavens  to  find  him  and  then  turn  to  us  and 
say,  I  find  no  heavenly  Father.  Thus  it  is  not  really  God  the 
Father  that  helps  us,  or  Christ  that  saves  us.  The  historical 
Jesus  is  dead  and  buried,  and  God  the  Father  cannot  be  found. 
But  our  faith  in  them  are  "helping  ideas"  whereby  we  save 
our  own  souls.  It  is  not  a  living,  present  Christ  that  works  the 
mystic  process  of  redemption  within  us.  But  we  find  that  by 
believing  and  acting  as  if  the  unknowable  God  were  a  Father, ^ 
as  the  dead  Jesus  did  when  he  was  alive,  we  are  able  to  have  a 
deeper  and  fuller  religious  life.  We  are  not  to  accept  this 
Fatherhood-of-God  belief  on  the  authority  of  Jesus.  But  we 
are  to  try  the  effect  upon  ourselves  of  believing  it  as  he  did.  It 
is  only  in  this  sense  that  Jesus  mediates  to  us  this  feeling  of 
filial  relation  to  God.  It  is  merely  a  value- judgment  when  we 
affirm  that  the  historic  Jesus  had  the  highest  spiritual  ex- 
perience. He  now  lives  only  as  a  memory,  and  affects  us  only  as 
the  memory  of  any  other  departed  great  soul  affects  us.  The 
ever-living  presence  of  Christ  in  the  heart,  or  in  the  Eucharist, 
is  set  aside.  Jesus  lived  and  died  and  was  buried.  That  is  the 
historic  Christ  for  Harnack  and  most  of  the  Ritschlians.  Our 
religious  experience  of  filial  relation  to  the  unknowable  God  is 
only  awakened  and  nurtured  by  our  knowledge  of  this  person 
of  past  history.     This  is  the  only  mediation  allowed.     So  that 


SABATIER,  HARNACK  AND  LOISY  67 

after  all  their  standpoint  is  practically  the  same  as  Sabatier's — 
i.  e.,  immediacy,  pectoralism,  subjectivity. 

Another  point  of  similarity  with  Sabatier  is  the  conception 
the  school  has  of  the  kingdom  of  God.  Suffice  it  to  say  that 
this  is  purely  a  spiritual  kingdom.  "The  kingdom  of  God  is 
within  you,"  is  the  one  misinterpreted  text  on  which  they  found 
hostility  to  an  external  kingdom,  an  ecclesiastical  organization 
— a  body  for  the  continual  real  presence  of  an  ever  living  Christ 
on  earth.  It  antagonizes  all  political  (using  the  term  in  its 
true  sense)  organization  of  the  kingdom  as  it  does  all  specula- 
tive theology.  It  wants  the  historic  Jesus,  without  historical 
Christianity.  Dogmatic  theology  and  ecclesiastical  organiza- 
tions are,  alike,  pagan  perversions  of  the  pure  gospel.  Here 
again  we  have  the  subjectivism  of  "the  kernel  without  the 
husk,"  the  spirit  without  the  body.  Again,  all  the  Messianic 
conceptions  that  Jesus  had  are  merely  the  local  coloring  and 
temporary  husk  of  the  true  religion  in  the  heart  of  Jesus.  He 
was  mistaken  in  his  Messianic  ideas. 

Here  we  may  take  Harnack  as  the  most  radical  representa- 
tive of  the  school.  In  his  recent  work^  he  repudiates  Chris- 
tology,  with  the  rest  of  the  school.  But  his  chief  hete  noire  is 
the  Church.  He  practically  discards  historical  or  ecclesiastical 
Christianity  as  a  perversion  of  the  Gospel.  We  note  in  passing 
Harnack's  reduction  of  Jesus  to  mere  but  lofty  humanity ;  his 
discarding  of  the  miraculous  elements  of  the  Gospel,  and  his 
frank  repudiation  of  "Jesusolatry."  The  Gospel,  as  Jesus 
proclaimed  it,  has  to  do  with  the  Father,  not  zvith  the  Son.^ 
Jesus  was  the  pathfinder,  not  the  path.  His  Messianic  assump- 
tions were  merely  the  accidental  mistakes  due  to  his  environ- 
ment. In  fact  we  may  say  that  on  all  supernaturalistic  views 
of  the  Gospel  he  occupies  the  point  of  view  of  what  may  be 
termed  "modern  culture,"  and  like  Sabatier  he  tries  to  bring 

*  The  Essence  of  Christianity,  or  as  the  translator  calls  it,  What  li 
Christianity? 
'P.  154 


66  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

"his  religious  consciousness  into  harmony  with  it."  Practically, 
he  does  this  by  throwing  overboard  the  whole  of  the  interpre- 
tation of  Christianity  as  made  by  the  Church.  Thus  he  accepts 
as  the  "Easter  faith"  of  eternal  life,  but  rejects  the  "Easter 
message"  that  Jesus  arose  from  the  grave  and  appeared  to  His 
disciples.  A  few  years  ago  he  advised  German  theological 
students  with  advanced  views  to  petition  the  government  to  cut 
out  the  Apostles'  Creed  from  their  required  ordination  vow. 
The  essence  of  Christianity  with  him  is  the  life  of  Jesus  in  the 
soul  of  man.  Or  it  consists  uniquely  in  the  faith  in  God  the 
Father,  which  Jesus  has  revealed.  Filial  confidence  was  the 
essence  of  the  personal  religion  of  Jesus.  And  identity  of  this 
sentiment  in  Jesus  and  in  Christians  constitutes  the  continuity  of 
Christianity  and  the  immutability  of  its  essence. 

"But  the  fact  that  the  whole  of  Jesus'  message  may  be  re- 
duced to  these  two  heads — God  as  Father  and  the  human  soul 
so  ennobled  that  it  can  and  does  unite  with  him — show  us  that 
the  Gospel  is  nowise  a  positive  religion  like  the  rest."' 

He  puts  all  of  Jesus'  teaching  under  three  heads : 

"First,  the  Kingdom  of  God  and  its  coming. 

Secondly,  God  the  Father  and  the  infinite  value  of  the 
human  soul. 

Thirdly,  the  higher  righteousness  and  the  commandment  of 
love."« 

Again.  "In  the  combination  of  these  ideas — God  the 
Father,  Providence,  the  position  of  men  as  God's  children,  the 
infinite  value  of  the  human  soul — ^the  whole  Gospel  is  ex- 
pressed."' 

He  explicates  the  Kingdom  of  God,  entirely  unhistorically, 
as  a  purely  subjective,  spiritual  kingdom.  The  kingdom  of 
God  is  within  the  heart.  He  maintains  that  Christ  divorced  his 
ethical  teaching  entirely  from  the  external  forms  of  religious 

*  What  Is  Christianity  f  p.  68. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  55. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  74. 


SABATIER,  HARNACK  AND  LOISY  69 

worship.  The  higher  righteousness — freed  from  alHance  with 
the  public  religion,  laid  emphasis  on  the  "intention"  of  the  doer. 
Its  root  is  the  disposition  in  the  heart.^ 

He  believes  only  in  the  imitation  of  Christ  and  not  in  Jesus- 
olatry.  For  he  agrees  with  Sabatier  that  Jesus  himself  does  not 
occupy  a  central  place  in  the  Gospel.  It  is  God  the  Father  that 
is  the  heart  of  the  Gospel. 

"The  Gospel,  as  Jesus  proclaimed  it,  has  to  do  with  the 
Father,  not  with  the  Son."^  He  was  only  the  first  personal 
realization  of  filial  relation  to  the  Father.  It  was  his  disciples, 
and  the  Apostles,  and  the  Fathers  and  Doctors  of  the  Church 
who  put  the  Person  of  Jesus  in  place  of  his  Gospel  of  the 
Fatherhood  of  God. 

"The  sentence — 'I  am  the  Son  of  God' — was  not  inserted  in 
the  Gospel  by  Jesus  himself,  and  to  put  that  sentence  there  side 
by  side  with  the  others,  is  to  make  an  addition  to  the  Gospel."^ 

"That  it  is  a  perverse  proceeding  to  make  Christology  the 
fundamental  substance  of  the  Gospel  is  shown  by  Christ's  teach- 
ing, which  is  everywhere  directed  to  the  all-important  point,  and 
summarily  confronts  every  man  directly  with  his  God."*  "Paul 
became  the  author  of  the  speculative  idea  that  not  only  was  God 
in  Christ,  but  that  Christ  himself  was  possessed  of  a  peculiar 
nature  of  a  heavenly  kind."^  In  consonance  with  this,  the  doc- 
trine of  the  atonement  is  explained  as  a  later  addition  to  the  pure 
Gospel,  made  by  Paul — "the  most  luminous  personality  in  the 
history  of  primitive  Christianity."  In  fact,  he  gives  up  the 
whole  of  the  Church's  teachings  as  to  the  person  and  work  of 
Jesus  as  Son  of  God  and  Saviour — demurring  to  the  "putting  a 
Christological  Creed  in  the  forefront  of  the  Gospel."  Jesus  was 
not  the  eternal  Son  of  God,  but  the  loftiest  of  the  sons  of  men. 

^  What  Is  Christianity  f  p.  77. 
^  Ibid.,  p.  154. 
^Ibid.,  p.  156. 
*  Ibid.,  p.  198. 
'^  Ibid.,  p.  199. 


70  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

Hence  all  worship  paid  to  Jesus  is  a  form  of  idolatry.  For  he 
is  still  only  a  man — a  man  with  lofty  and  inspiring  views  about 
the  Unknowable  as  a  Father.  He  was  subject  to  imperfection 
of  knowledge ;  biased  by  the  Jewish  Messianic  conceptions  and 
in  no  way  infallible.  How  then  is  his  religious  feeling  of  filial 
relation  to  the  Father  to  be  certified  as  other  than  a  personal 
idiosyncrasy  of  feeling — contagious  indeed — ^but  why  any 
higher  or  truer  than  that  of  some  other  man  ? 

"The  identification  of  the  Logos  with  Christ  was  the  deter- 
mining factor  in  the  fusion  of  Greek  philosophy  with  the  Apos- 
tolic inheritance  and  led  the  more  thoughtful  Greeks  to  adopt 
the  latter.  Most  of  us  regard  this  identification  as  inadmis- 
sible, because  the  way  we  conceive  the  world  and  ethics  does  not 
point  to  the  existence  of  any  Logos  at  all."^  He  has  previously 
objected  to  this  identification  of  "a  person  who  had  appeared  in 
time  and  space  relations"  with  the  eternal  Logos.  In  fact  he 
throughout  strenuously  attacks  the  whole  of  the  Church's  Chris- 
tologfy — objecting  to  this  transcendental,  cosmical  and  eternal 
form  being  given  to  any  Son  of  Man. 

The  latter  part  of  his  book  is  given  to  the  overthrowing  of 
historical  Christianity,  by  showing  the  historical  origins  of  the 
Church's  interpretation  and  the  extension  of  the  gospel  as  a 
kingdom  of  God  on  earth.  It  is  by  the  use  of  the  historical 
method  that  he  seeks  to  invalidate  all  the  historical  forms  of  au- 
thority in  religion.  We  need  not  go  into  details.  He  covers  the 
same  ground,  and  in  much  the  same  way,  as  Sabatier  and  Marti- 
neau,  to  show  that  the  kingdom  of  God  is  within  the  soul  and  not 
in  any  external  institutional  form ;  that  historical  Christianity  is 
not  true  pure  Christianity.  All  historical  transformations  of 
Christianity  are  perversions  of,  and  lapses  from  the  pure  gospel. 
That  is  really  his  thesis.  The  meal,  in  which  the  leaven  was 
placed,  corrupted  the  leaven  rather  than  the  leaven  leavening 
the  whole  lump.  In  this  course  of  transformation  it  is  only  oc- 
casionally that  the  true  Gospel  shines  out  as  in  the  apostolic  age, 

»P.  230. 


SABATIER,  HARNACK  AND  LOISY  71 

especially  in  the  universalizing  of  the  Gospel  by  St.  Paul ;  in  the 
evangelical  side  of  St.  Augustine,  and  in  the  inwardness  and 
spirituality  of  the  first  phase  of  the  reformation,  especially  in 
Luther.  In  the  patristic  age,  "a  blow  was  dealt  to  the  direct 
and  immediate  element  in  religion,"  as  Christians  were  brought 
under  the  authority  and  tutelage  of  the  church.  Growing  intel- 
lectualism  was  beginning  the  mischievous  work  of  orthodoxy, 
and  the  church  was  developing  into  an  institution  with  power 
over  the  individuals.  In  the  Greek  church,  the  Gospel  "takes 
the  form,  not  of  a  Christian  product  in  Greek  dress,  but  of  a 
Greek  product  in  Christian  dress."  Here  too  developed  the 
slavish  obedience  to  tradition  and  here  too  "arose  the  aggressive 
and  all-devouring  orthodoxy  of  State  and  Church,  or  rather  of 
the  State-Church."^  "But  with  traditionalism  and  intellectual- 
ism,  a  further  element  is  associated,  namely  ritualism."  Chris- 
tianity relapsed  into  the  lowest  class  of  religions — "descended  to 
the  level  where  religion  may  be  described  as  a  cult  and  nothing 
but  a  cult."^  "As  a  whole  and  in  its  structure  the  system  of  the 
Oriental  churches  is  foreign  to  the  Gospel." 

The  Roman  Catholic  Church,  while  far  in  advance  of  Greek 
Catholicism,  however,  only  exaggerated  its  evil  of  ecclesiasti- 
cism.  It  "privily  pushed  itself  into  place  of  the  Roman  world- 
empire  of  which  it  is  the  actual  continuation."^  Finally  he  asks 
as  to  Roman  Catholicism,  "What  modifications  has  the  Gospel 
undergone  and  how  much  of  it  is  left  ?  This,  however,  is  not  a 
matter  that  needs  many  words — ^the  whole  outward  and  visible 
institution  of  a  Church  claiming  divine  dignity  has  no  founda- 
tion whatever  in  the  Gospel.  It  is  a  case  not  of  distortion,  but 
of  total  perversion,"* 

Finally,  after  acknowledging  that  "the  Roman  Church  is  the 
most  comprehensive,  the  vastest,  the  most  complicated  and  yet 

' P.  242. 
*  Pp.  256-261. 
' P.  270. 
*P.  281. 


72  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

at  the  same  time  the  most  uniform  structure,  which  so  far  as 
we  know,  history  has  produced,"  he  goes  on  to  declare  that 
"Roman  Catholicism  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  Gospel,  nay,  is 
in  fundamental  contradiction  with  it."^ 

This  is  noteworthy  as  showing  the  lack  of  the  historical  spirit 
in  one  using  the  historical  method.  The  greatest  historical  in- 
stitution of  the  world  is  not  significant  of  God  in  history. 

His  treatment  of  Protestantism  is  not  so  full  or  drastic  as 
that  of  Sabatier.  He  emphasizes  especially  the  protest  of  the 
early  reformers  against  sacerdotalism ;  against  all  formal  ex- 
ternal authority  in  religion,  and  against  all  ritualism.  At  the 
same  time  he  speaks  of  "the  Catholicising  of  the  Protestant 
Churches,"  adding,  "I  do  not  mean  they  are  becoming  papal : 
I  mean  that  they  are  becoming  churches  of  ordinance,  of  doc- 
trine and  ceremony."^ 

All  this  is  again  the  "putting  of  religion  on  the  Catholic 
plane."  Protestant  Christianity  in  making  doctrine,  discipline 
and  worship  of  Christ  to  be  essentials  of  Christianity  is  only 
another  form  of  a  relgion  of  authority,  which  calls  for  an 
earnest  protest  of  liberty  of  the  Christian  man ;  a  return  to  the 
pure  primitive  Gospel ;  a  casting  away  the  husks  of  religion,  and 
keeping  only  the  kernel ;  an  endeavor  on  the  part  of  each  indi- 
vidual to  be  a  Jesus,  or  to  have  his  personal  feeling  in  his  heart 
apart  from  historical,  institutional  Christianity ;  apart  from  all 
the  historical  forms  devoted  to  the  nurture  of  man's  religious 
nature. 

' P.  283. 
•P.  316. 


CHAPTER  II— Continued 

Taking  Sabatier  and  the  Ritchlian  Harnack  as  the  religious 
representatives  of  modern  culture,  we  find  what  an  insignificant 
remnant  of  historical  Christianity  can  be  accepted.  Authority 
and  conformity  are  set  aside  as  inconsistent  with  freedom.  In 
the  soul  of  each  individual,  the  immediate  relation  to  God  is 
the  whole  soul,  life,  spirit  and  authority  of  religion.  There  is 
no  orthodoxy,  no  communal  authority,  no  authority  even  of  a 
Jesus.  It  is  only  just  to  state  that  both  of  them  were  nurtured 
in  the  evangelical  type  of  Protestantism.  It  is  fair  to  suppose 
that,  without  this  nurture,  they  would  not  have  been  so  deeply 
religious  in  spirit  as  they  show  themselves  to  be,  nor  so  earnest 
in  seeking  a  secure  place  for  religion  in  modern  life. 

They  accept  modern  thought  as  authoritative.  Christianity 
must  be  purged  of  any  statements  or  belief  that  conflict  with  it. 
Modern  thought  is  knowledge.  And  where  Christianity,  in  its 
intellectual  form,  contradicts  modern  culture,  it  is  to  be  given 
up.  Only  the  subjective  feeling  or  sentiment — the  essential  ele- 
ment in  Christianity — is  to  be  kept.  All  else  is  husk,  supersti- 
tious idealizings  of  facts. 

The  Zeitgeist  has  so  fully  mastered  them  that  they  mistake 
the  spirit  of  the  age  for  the  spirit  of  the  ages.  They  are  too 
ready  to  apply  to  the  historical  forms  of  Christianity  the  poet's 
lines : 

"Our  little  systems  have  their  day. 
They  have  their  day  and  cease  to  be." 

But  they  have  not  profited  by  a  study  of  the  history  of  all  forms 
of  knowledge,  and  especially  of  the  forms  of  criticism,  to  apply 
these  lines  to  them.  They  are  too  ready  to  accept  ^nodern 
critical  views  as  final ;  to  accept  the  spirit  of  this  age  as  that  of 
"the  age  of  of  reason."     Both  of  them,  too,  being  students  of 

73 


74  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

history  and  using  the  historical  method  fail  to  see  the  perfectly 
unhistorical  spirit  they  betray  in  their  interpretation  of  all  the 
forms  of  historical  Christianity  as  being  corruptions  rather  than 
developments. 

Both  also  fail  to  see  that  their  "essence  of  Christianity"  and 
"religion  of  the  spirit,"  are  no  more  reconcilable  with  the  meta- 
physics of  modern  science  than  is  any  form  of  orthodoxy.  This 
has  no  more  place  for  God  the  Father  and  the  filial  relation  of 
man  to  Him,  than  it  has  for  the  husks  which  they  have  dis- 
carded. All  are  alike  Aberglanbe.  It  is  simply  impossible  for 
any  one  who  holds  the  rigid  mechanical  view  of  the  universe, 
and  the  theory  of  reality  that  is  put  forth  by  some  men  of 
science — the  bad  metaphysics  which  really  form  no  part  of  posi- 
tive science — to  find  any  place  for  any  sort  of  religion.* 

The  enlightenment,  the  critical  empiricism  of  the  mere  under- 
standing always  means  the  dry  rot  of  all  living  institutions. 
When  the  "very  pulses  of  the  machine,"  of  wife,  mother,  child ; 
of  literature,  art  and  religion,  are  laid  bare  and  declared  to  be 
the  whole  of  their  reality ;  when  the  nimbus  of  the  higher  hu- 
manity, the  warm  life-blood  within  and  the  garments  of  light 
and  beauty  and  worth  without,  are  criticised  away  we  are  left 
with  a  lifeless  skeleton. 

"The  parts  in  his  hand 

He  may  hold  and  clasp. 

But  lost  is  the  living  link,  alas!" 

Life  goes  with  it  out  of  all  thus  criticised.  Our  literature 
ceases  to  be  inspiring  and  elevating.  Our  art  becomes  mechan- 
ically and  vulgarly  realistic.  Our  religion  becomes  at  best  an 
arid  Deism.  Our  sacred  books — well,  look  at  what  our  modern 
scientific  criticism  has  made  of  the  Bible.  Granted  that  from 
their  point  of  view  the  critics  have  done  scientific  work,  it  re- 
mains to  be  said  that  their  work  is  abstract  and  imperfect  as  an 
analysis  of  the  real  concrete  nature  of  the  Bible.  Looked  at 
from  their  point  of  view  alone,  it  ceases  to  be  The  Bible — the 

*  Cf.  Chap.  IV  of  this  volume. 


SABATIER,  HARNACK  AND  LOISY  75 

life-giving  form  of  sacred  literature.  This  shows,  at  least,  the 
inadequacy  of  the  scientific  and  critical  points  of  view.  It 
shows  that  their  categories  cannot  measure  man  as  a  creature 
of  a  larger  discourse ;  that  to  have  a  spirit  we  need  the  nearer, 
clearer,  more  concrete  view,  that  art,  religion  and  philosophy- 
afford. 

Gk)d  the  Father  is  not  a  verifiable  entity  for  the  monistic 
metaphysics  of  some  men  of  science.  Where  Nature  is  all, 
the  real  reality — God — there  is  none. 

But  let  us  note,  to  what  they  have  reduced  Christianity — 
what  enveloping  husks  of  historical  developments  they  have 
peeled  off,  to  find  the  pure  undeveloped  form  to  which  they  still 
give  allegiance.     They  give  us — 

( 1 )  A  non-miraculous  Christianity. 

(2)  A  non-Christocentric  Christianity. 

(3)  A non-credal  Christianity. 

(4)  A  non-ecclesiastical  Christianity. 

(5)  A  non-cult  religion. 

(6)  A  non-knowable  Deity. 

(7)  An  immediate  feeling  in  the  heart  of  each  believer  of  his 

relation  to  the  Unknowable  God,  as  Father. 

(8)  A  dead  and  buried  Jesus  of  Nazareth — a  man  in  whose 

heart  there  was  true  religion  and  whose  message  is 

above  his  person. 
The  six  negatives  set  aside  all  the  historical  forms  in  which 
the  Church  has  embodied  her  exposition  and  mediations  of 
Christianity.  The  two  positives  have  always  been  held  by  every 
form  of  the  Church,  but  not  in  the  abstract  form  in  which  they 
present  them.  As  a  matter  of  historical  fact  there  never  has 
been  such  a  form  of  Christianity  on  earth.  Such  a  Christianity 
has  to  be  evolved  from  the  inner  consciousness  of  the  critics. 
The  real  Christianity,  which  it  is  the  business  of  historical  stu- 
dents to  study,  and  of  philosophers  to  estimate,  is  the  factual 
Christianity  of  the  Church — a  Christianity  of  creed,  cult  and 
polity,  a  kingdom  of  God  on  earth — in  our  midst.     We  may 


76  IHE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

grant  the  relative  imperfection  of  all  these  factors,  and  the  tem- 
porary and  metaphorical  character  of  many  religious  concep- 
tions. But  we  must  distinguish  between  these  and  speculative, 
catholic  theology.  So  too,  as  to  the  persistent  type  of  polity  and 
cult,  amid  all  their  transformations — Roman,  Greek  and 
Protestant.  We  must  see  them  as  organic  elements  in  an  insti- 
tutional Christianity  that  has  had  a  much  more  permanent  form 
than  any  civil  institution.  We  must  see  the  function  of  all  these 
elements  in  the  educative  work  of  the  Church,  and  the  ideal  end 
towards  which  it  has  been  «o  mightily  energizing  through  the 
centuries.  Philosophy  is  not  religion,  but  it  gives  the  rational 
interpretation  of  it,  which  neither  science  nor  history  can  give. 
They  can  give  the  facts  and  the  order  of  facts,  but  not  the  spir- 
itual link,  not  the  teleological  logic  immanent  in  the  whole  his- 
tory of  Christianity  that  makes  it  evident  that  it  is  a  work  of 
God. 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  these  writers  give  up  the  miraculous  ele- 
ment in  the  New  Testament.  They  practically  accept  the  views 
of  Strauss  and  Renan,  Thus  they  answer  the  objection  of  mod- 
ern thought  to  miracles,  by  agreeing  with  it.  The  miraculous 
birth,  resurrection  and  glorification  of  Jesus  form  no  part  of  the 
historical  Jesus,  or  of  the  essence  of  Christianity,  This,  of 
course,  is  a  break  with  the  whole  historical  view  of  Christ, 
woven  into  the  very  fibre  of  the  Church's  interpretation.  It 
gives  us  a  purely  human  Jesus,  with  at  best  a  uniquely  acute 
sense  of  that  filial  relation  to  God  that  is  possible  to  all  men — 
aroused  and  quickened  more  or  less  by  means  of  the  contagious 
sentiment  of  that  of  Jesus,  who  "was  crucified,  dead  and 
buried,"  This  paragraph  in  the  Apostles'  Creed  gives  the  his- 
torical close  of  the  life  of  Jesus. 

As  another  has  said  "the  last  authentic  utterance  of  the  his- 
torical Jesus  was  his  cry  of  despair  on  the  cross." 

They  take  us  back  from  the  Christ  of  the  Church,  and  thi^ 
is  what  they  give  us  in  its  place.  All  the  function  of  mediation 
left  to  Christ,  is  that  which  comes  from  his  common  earthly  life, 


SABATIER.  HARNACK  AND  LOISY  tj 

through  the  activity  of  human  memory.  This  mediation  be- 
comes less  and  less  essential.  As  Martineau  said :  he  is  medi- 
ator, "not  instead  of  immediate  revelation,  but  simply  as  making 
us  more  aware  of  it  and  helping  us  to  interpret  it.  For  in  the 
constitution  of  the  human  soul  there  is  provision  for  an  immedi- 
ate apprehension  of  God."^ 

As  to  their  non-miraculous  Christianity,  it  would  certainly 
necessitate  a  most  corrosive  revision  of  the  creed  and  cult  of 
every  form  of  the  Church.  All  worship  of  Christ,  in  hymn  and 
sacrament,  would  have  to  be  eliminated.  All  the  warm  glow  of 
thanksgiving  for  our  redemption  through  Him  must  needs  be 
given  up.  All  the  moral  life  that  comes  from  the  belief  that 
personality,  human  and  divine  are  potencies  above  the  mechan- 
ical universe  would  cease.  The  rational  refusal  to  subordinate 
personality  to  impersonal  mechanism,  is  the  root  and  ground  of 
all  philosophical  maintenance  of  what  is  termed  the  miraculous 
element  in  Christianity. 

The  vulgar  miraculous,  like  all  other  vulgar  things,  is  out 
of  the  order  of  the  rational.  But  the  miracles  of  personality- 
miracles  connected  with  the  natural  supernaturalism  of  such  a 
personality  as  that  of  Jesus,  were  possible,  probable,  necessary. 
Relatively  to  the  mechanical  conception  of  nature,  and  of  man 
as  a  mechanical  part  of  this  nature,  all  truly  human  achieve- 
ments are  miracles.  Again  laws  of  nature  are  no  longer  reified 
as  actual  forces,  but  are  held  by  scientific  men  to  be  gen- 
eralized formula  of  description.  No  one  has  better  disposed  of 
Hume's  argument  against  miracles  than  Professor  Huxley.^ 
That  that  which  never  has  happened,  never  can  happen — the  gist 
of  Hume's  argument — would  not  now  be  accepted  by  any 
scientific  men.  If  a  man  were  to  rise  from  the  dead  before  their 
eyes,  they  would  simply  enlarge  their  formula — ^their  natural 
law,  their  generalized  statement,  to  include  the  new  phenome- 

'  Martineau:  Seal  of  Authority  in  Rehgton;  p.  651. 
'Hume,  by  Professor  Huxley;  Chap.  VIII  in  The  English  Men  of 
Letters  series. 


;8  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

non,  just  as  they  do  when  a  new  planet  swims  into  their  ken. 
Vulgar  ideas  of  miracles,  and  in  the  Bible  apparently  vulgar 
miracles  may  be  found,  but  miracles  of  personality  are  in  no 
sense  vulgar  or  irrational.  It  is  only  when  mechanical  causality 
is  reified  and  made  the  only  efficient  causality,  that  science  can 
say  a  word  against  the  possibility  of  miracles.  And  now  that 
scientific  men  have  eviscerated  causality  of  all  causal  efficiency* 
the  bug-bear  of  the  impossibility  is  slain  in  the  camp  of  science 
itself. 

Historical  Christianity  was  founded  upon  miracles  of  per- 
sonality. The  miraculous  element  is  of  its  very  essence,  if  we 
may  use  the  term  of  Harnack.  There  never  has  been  an  actual, 
historical  non-miraculous  Christianity.  Students  of  history 
may  or  may  not  believe  in  miracles.  But  when  they  come  to 
study  Christianity  as  an  historical  phenomenon  they  must  study 
it  as  professedly  founded  on  miracle.  That  is  the  only  sort  of 
Christianity  that  offers  itself  for  their  study.  To  evolve  a  con- 
ception of  the  essence  of  Christianity,  or  of  the  religion  of  the 
spirit  from  their  subjective  consciousness,  and  call  it  true  Chris- 
tianity is  enough  to  bow  them  out  of  the  consideration  of  all 
students  of  history.  They  have  forsaken  the  realm  of  the  posi- 
tive, yie  actual,  for  the  cloudlands  of  mere  subjectivity.  They 
are  in  the  realm  of  illusions  and  delusions,  in  a  dream  world, 
where  one  dream  is  as  little  real  as  another — one  view  of  re- 
ligion as  little  verifiable  and  rational  as  another.  But  when 
they  come  to  study  actual  Christianity  they  consider  it  as  a  mere 
dream,  at  best  as  a  degenerate  externalization  of  their  own 
dream.  This  externalization,  this  husk  of  their  dream-kernel 
they  then  treat  under  the  concept  of  mechanical  causality.  They 
take  its  primitive  form,  and  then  trace  its  historical  transforma- 
tions as  they  would  trace  the  transformation  of  heat  into  light, 
or  of  clay  into  bricks.  The  mechanism  of  thing  and  environ- 
ment is  their  formula.  Given  a  this  and  a  certain  environment, 
and  a  that  is  the  mechanical  result.  All  conception  of  a  tele- 
"■  CI.  Chap.  IV,  p. 


SABATIER,  HARNACK  AND  LOISY  79 

ological  development — if  that  be  not  a  redundant  formula,  for  all 
development  is  teleological — is  forsaken.  In  fact  all  conception 
of  development  is  replaced  by  the  conception  of  degeneracy. 
This  is  the  curious  hybrid  result  of  their  separating  and  yet  com- 
mingling of  esoteric  Christianity  with  historical  Christianity. 

Again,  they  treat  the  historical  transformations  of  Christian- 
ity under  mechanical  conceptions.  They  find  a  certain  sort  of 
development  of  institutional  Christianity,  but  comparing  it  with 
their  esoteric  Christianity,  they  pronounce  it  to  be  a  lapse  rather 
than  a  development.  We  demur  to  the  treatment  of  any  of  the 
institutional  acquisitions  of  man  under  the  concepts  of  physical 
science — of  thing  and  environment.^  Mere  physical  causality 
even  when  it  is  reified  as  an  actual  power,  is  no  creator  of  man 
and  his  institutions.  In  truth,  no  efficient  causality  can  be 
thought  except  as  an  element  in  a  final  cause.  The  final  cause 
is  the  true  and  abiding  first  cause.  The  banishing  of  final 
causes,  as  barren  vestals,  has  been  followed  recently  by  the 
abandonment  of  real  efficient  causality  by  modern  scientific 
thinkers.  In  this,  they  are  but  returning  to  the  view  of  Hume, 
Comte  and,  for  that  matter  of  Kant  too,  who  never  really  re- 
futed Hume's  view.  We  have  only  a  succession  of  events  in 
time,  casually,  but  not  causally  related.  But  these  writer^  still 
use  the  anthropomorphized  conception  of  efficient  causality. 
They  take  the  earliest  form  of  historical  Christianity,  and  ac- 
count for  its  transformations  by  the  successive  environment  of 
Greek  philosophy,  Roman  polity  and  pagan  cult.  Then  they 
consider  its  first  form  to  be  its  truest  form,  and  all  its  transfor- 
mations, lapses. 

One  who  goes  back  to  Aristotle,  or  to  catholic  philosophy  of 
all  ages,  for  his  dpctrines  of  causality  and  the  nature  of  a  thing, 
will  never  seek  an  explanation  of  any  institution  or  creed  in  its 
earliest  empirical  form.  Teleology  is  the  highest  form  of  caus- 
ality, and  the  nature  of  a  thing  is  seen  only  in  its  perfected  or 

developed  form.     Hence  the  crab  cry  of  "Back  to ;"  back 

^  Cf.  Chap.  IV  of  this  volume. 


8o  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

to  the  first  empirical  form  of  anything  as  to  its  true  form — the 
norm  by  which  to  test  all  subsequent  transformations — is  a 
cry  that  is  logically  a  call  back  to  an  alogical  view  of  the  world, 
whose  practical  and  logical  result  is  that  of  pessimism. 

Historically  the  first  form  of  Christianity  is  what  they  would 
term  a  Jewish  sect,  founded  upon  relations  to  a  Jewish  Mes- 
siah. It  is  not  true  that  the  personal  religion  of  Jesus,  his  sense 
of  filial  relation  to  God,  constitutes  the  essence  of  Christianity 
and,  in  no  historical  sense,  can  it  be  called  primitive  Christianity. 
Its  first  form  was  that  of  the  community  of  disciples  of  Jesus, 
founded  upon  belief  in  Him — not  as  a  friend  or  brother  or 
leader,  but  as  the  victorious,  glorified  Saviour,  who  still  was  re- 
demptively  present  with  them.  One  may  grant,  as  the  Church 
has  always  done,  that  there  was  a  freshness,  vigor  and  inspira- 
tion in  this  pristine  form  of  Christianity  that  has  scarcely  ever 
been  present  in  its  later  and  fuller  forms.  Scanty  creed  and 
polity  and  cult  were  theirs,  but  such  as  they  were,  it  has  always 
been  considered  that  they  gave  the  historical  germs  for  the  later 
and  fuller  developments  of  historical  Christianity.  Yet  primi- 
tive Christianity  was  not  more  than  the  germinating  seed.  All 
subsequent  transformations  have  been  either  a  development  or 
a  degeneracy,  as  the  tree  is  either  a  development  or  a  degeneracy 
of  the  seed.  These  writers  take  the  latter  view.  Moreover,  if 
Greek  philosophy  and  Roman  law  and  pagan  cult,  as  environ- 
ments, served  only  to  deteriorate  primitive  Christianity,  we  must 
give  up  the  conception  of  a  divine  Pedagogue  in  all  pre-Christian 
history.  We  do  not  consider  the  soil  and  water  and  air — the 
environment  of  the  seed — as  hostile  to  its  true  development. 
We  cannot  believe  in  God  in  human  history,  and  believe  that  all 
the  extra-Christian  achievements  of  the  race  were  poisonous 
environments,  hostile  to  the  development  of  Christianity.  The 
education  of  the  race  can  be  taken  partially  by  no  thinker,  espe- 
cially by  any  one  using  the  conception  of  development.  Any 
reversion  to  the  primitive  form  of  any  living  institution,  any 
denial  of  the  fostering  function  of  environment  as  furthering 


SABATIER,  HARNACK  AND  LOISY  8l 

development  of  the  germ,  betrays  the  utmost  artlessness  of  un- 
scientific, unhistorical  and  unphilosophical  comprehension.  The 
organic  connection  of  Christianity  with  Judaism  is  allowed. 
But  how  can  any  one  who  believes  in  a  Logos  in  human  history, 
decline  to  extend  this  organic  conception  to  all  the  other  environ- 
ing achievements  of  the  Logos  in  the  human  race. 

The  Greek  Fathers  of  old,  as  Lessing  and  Hegel  of  modern 
times,  voiced  this  conception  of  "the  education  of  the  race," 
each  nation  being  given  some  specific  task  or  lesson  to  learn, 
that  in  the  fullness  of  the  times  they  might  all  contribute  to  the 
catholic  wisdom  and  welfare  of  the  organic  race.  The  King- 
dom of  heaven — the  consummate  flower  of  the  education  of  the 
race — was  likened  by  the  Founder  himself  "to  a  seed  that  a  man 
should  cast  into  the  ground,  which  groweth  up,  he  knoweth  not 
how,  because  the  earth  bringeth  forth  fruit  of  herself."  He 
who  made  the  seed  made  also  the  fertile  earth  into  which  he 
casts  it  in  order  that  it  may  not  retain  its  primitive,  undeveloped 
form,  but  spring  up  and  grow  by  taking  nutriment  from  soil  and 
air  and  sky.  So  historical  Christianity  grew  and  developed. 
The  world  was  prepared  for  the  seed.  Greek  philosophy, 
Roman  law  and  pagan  cults  were  the  earth  into  which  it  was  cast 
and  from  which  it  was  to  draw  nutriment.  As  a  matter  of  fact 
these  others  were  more  ready  to  receive  Christianity  than  were 
the  Jews.  Greek  philosophy  was  as  instrumental  in  formulat- 
ing the  Nicene  symbol,  as  the  Jewish  Messianic  idea  was  in 
developing  the  Messianic  role  of  Jesus.  The  same  is  true  of  all 
the  other  environments  that  have  been  instrumental  in  the  de- 
veloping transformations  of  historical  Christianity.  The  Gospel 
has  never  been  pure  unincarnate  spirit.  It  has  expanded  from 
that  of  a  small  Jewish  sect  into  a  world  wide  church,  by  means 
of  fostering  environments.  Christianity  has  always  been  an 
embodied  religion.  To  learn  what  Christianity  is  one  must  go 
to  history.  And  going  to  history  he  finds  it,  not  as  an  invisible 
essence,  but  as  a  nineteen  century  old  and  a  world-wide  organi- 
zation that  has  drawn  nutriment  and  made  itself  a  growing 

6 


82  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

body  from  all  the  other  attainments  of  the  human  spirit.  But 
such  a  comprehensive  non-puritanical  conception  of  historical 
Christianity  seems  foreign  to  these  writers.  They  are  puritans 
of  the  most  extreme  form.  They  are  mere  subjectivists  of  the 
Neo-Platonic  type.  With  them  true  Christianity  is  all  in  the 
heart,  or  all  in  the  air.  The  secular  is  profane.  It  is  the  devil's, 
not  God's  world.  All  the  historical  developments  of  Christian- 
ity have  been  due  to  hostile  environments.  We  must  back  to 
the  personal  religion  in  the  heart  of  a  Jewish  peasant ;  back  to 
the  primitive  form  of  the  community  that  believed  in  Jesus  as 
Messiah. 

If  we  believe  in  development,  we  cannot  take  this  crab  cry 
too  seriously.  It  represents  at  best  our  natural  interest  in  the 
beginnings  of  things.  But  the  beginnings  are  necessarily  seen 
in  the  light  of  their  developed  form.  We  like  to  go  back  to  the 
days  of  our  childhood,  to  the  times  of  the  founding  of  any  in- 
stitution of  which  we  are  members.  We  venerate  our  ancestors. 
We  idealize  the  temporal  beginnings  of  our  societies,  because 
we  are  enjoying  the  fruition  of  them.  We  idealize  the  seed  be- 
cause we  see  the  tree.  Cold  historical  criticism,  however,  will 
never  assent  to  the  view  that  the  primitive  form  of  any  institu- 
tion is  its  most  perfectly  developed  form.  Apart  from  the  re- 
freshment of  spirit  that  comes  to  us  in  the  midst  of  the  strenuous 
life  of  manhood,  from  going  back  to  the  idealized  days  of  our 
childhood,  there  is  no  profit  in  looking  backward  rather  than 
forward.  Intellectually,  the  crab  cry — back  to  the  beginning  of 
anything  that  is  in  a  process  of  development — is  irrational.  We 
know  what  this  crab-cry  "Back  to  Kant"  means.  It  means  back 
to  the  first  stage  of  his  work,  and  a  negating  of  his  fuller  devel- 
opment of  other  phases.  It  means  back  to  the  First  Critique — 
back  to  the  first  stage  of  Kant's  whole  system ;  back  to  the  nega- 
tive side  of  that  Critique.  It  means  practically,  back  to  an  un- 
spiritual,  mechanical,  materialistic  interpretation  of  the  universe. 
God,  freedom  and  immortality,  for  which  Kant's  whole  philoso- 
phy stood  are  thus  dismissed,  as  the  hybrid,  degenerate  forms 


SABATIER,  HARNACK  AND  LOISY  83 

of  his  philosophy,  by  the  Neo-Kantianer.  We  know  Rousseau's 
crab-cry  of  "back  to  Nature  from  civiHzation."  We  know  Von 
Hartmann's  crab-cry  of,  back  from  consciousness  into  the  un- 
conscious, by  cosmic  suicide.  We  know  all  these  crab-cries  as 
voicing  the  belief  in  retrogression  rather  than  in  development  in 
all  human  institutions.  We  know  them,  logically,  as  the  fatigue 
forms  of  Orientalism  in  opposition  to  the  strenuous  forms  of 
the  Occident.  So  when  we  come  to  the  crab-cry  of  these 
writers,  "back  to  the  primitive  Gospel,"  back  to  the  religion  in 
the  heart  of  Jesus,  we  may  be  prepared  to  find  the  same  vicious 
error  of  abstraction.  It  is  a  taking  of  a  part  for  the  whole,  a 
seed  for  the  tree,  an  undeveloped  for  a  developed  form  of 
Christianity.  For  the  empirical  origin  of  any  institution  is  al- 
was  a  relatively  undeveloped,  imperfect  form.  The  end  is  not 
yet,  especially  in  the  first  stage.  The  end  is  real,  and  efficient, 
or  there  would  be  no  development.  The  final  cause  is  the  real 
first  cause,  though  in  the  order  of  the  process,  it  is  the  last  in  the 
empirical  realization  of  the  true  nature  of  anything.  Either  his- 
torical Christianity  of  to-day  is  a  more  developed  form,  or  the 
concept  of  development  applies  to  everything  but  to  Christianity. 

Again,  this  return  to  the  primitive,  is  psychologically  impos- 
sible. We  cannot  demodernize  ourselves.  We  cannot  return  to 
primitive  Christianity.  We  cannot  Judaize  ourselves,  put  our- 
selves into  the  states  of  consciousness  of  the  early  disciples.  For 
better  or  worse,  our  consciousness  is  that  of  the  modern  world, 
into  which  Greek  and  Roman  and  Germanic  elements  have  en- 
tered. No  more  indeed,  we  should  add,  can  we  absolutely  mod- 
ernize ourselves ;  repudiate  those  historical  fibres  that  are  not 
modern,  and  yet  are  very  flesh  of  our  flesh  and  spirit  of  our 
spirit.  The  spirit  of  the  age,  the  modern  spirit,  is  abstract  and 
untrue  when  wrested  from  its  organic  continuity  with  the  spirit 
of  the  ages. 

The  crab-cry  is  pathological  and  pessimistic.  Psycholog- 
ically it  can  never  be  realized.  Christianity  is  what  it  has  be- 
come.    Nor  can  we  go  back  to  "the  historic  Christ."    We  can- 


84  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

not  "rediscover  Christ."  If  there  be  no  really  ever-present 
Christ  in  his  Church,  no  Logos  in  Christian  history,  then  the 
only  Christ  that  we  can  "rediscover"  is  the  dead  and  buried 
Jesus.  Back  to  Jesus  who  died  and  was  buried ;  back  to  Jesus 
"whose  last  authentic  utterance  was  his  cry  of  despair  on  the 
cross."  Back  to  him  through  the  imperfect  reproduction  of  his- 
torical memory — that  is  the  utmost  that  this  cry,  "back  to  Jesus," 
can  mean,  unless  we  give  rein  to  what  is  called  the  historical 
imagination.  But  that  is  just  what  critics  fault  tradition  and 
the  Church  for  doing — for  giving  idealized  embellishments  of 
empirical  facts. 

The  historian,  especially  the  historian  who  believes  in  the 
modern  doctrine  of  development,  should  be  the  last  one  to  make 
the  crab-cry  "back."  Whatever  the  primitive  historical  form 
of  any  institution  may  have  been,  it  must  be,  for  the  historical 
evolutionist,  primitive,  undeveloped,  relatively  more  imperfect 
than  its  later  and  more  developed  forms.  The  truth  in  this  cry, 
back  to  the  primitive,  one  may  well  recognize.  It  is  the  truth 
that,  for  feeling,  the  first  outburst  of  a  new  movement  is 
warmer ;  for  thought  and  action  it  is  more  inspired  and  heroic. 
If  modern  developed  forms  of  Christianity  could  have  the  warm 
feelings  and  the  inspired  insights  and  the  heroic  energizing  of 
primitive  Christianity — could  its  length  and  breadth  be  multi- 
plied by  the  intensive  depth  of  the  early  community  of  Chris- 
tians, there  would  come  such  a  time  of  refreshing  and  strength- 
ening of  the  Christian  life  as  would  make  Christianity  far  more 
saving  than  it  now  is.  But  historical  Christianity  has  always 
recognized  this.  Special  inspiration  and  authority  are  accorded 
to  the  apostles.  The  Church  has  always  bid  men  look  back  lov- 
ingly to  these  times.  Her  whole  doctrine  and  cult  are  means  to 
get  men  in  touch  with  that  warm  inspiration  of  the  primitive 
Church. 

But  historical  Christianity  has  never  been  a  mere  copying  of 
primitive  Christianity.  It  has  never  been  a  holding  fast  to  an 
unchangeable  identity  without  perpetual,  life-stimulating  ele- 


SABATIER,  HARNACK  AND  LOISY  85 

merits  of  difference.  Its  vital  cry  has  not  been,  back  into  the 
womb,  or  forward  into  the  tomb,  but  forward  into  new  and 
fuller  life. 

This  crab-cry  finds  its  logical  expression  in  Orientalism 
and  in  Von  Hartmann's  Philosophy  of  the  Unconscious.  All 
conscious  personal  life  is  a  lapse  from  the  Unconscious.  Hence 
humanity's  progress  must  be  a  backward  one  into  the  Un- 
conscious. It  is  needless  to  expatiate  upon  the  Oriental  con- 
ception, even  in  the  modern  form  that  Von  Hartmann  gives  it. 
We  know  that  its  heart  is  absolutely  pessimistic  in  regard  to  all 
of  humanity's  hard  earned  forms  of  culture.  We  know  that 
rigorous  asceticism — repression  of  life,  is  its  method  for  retro- 
gression into  the  unconscious,  and  that  "cosmic  suicide"  is  its 
ideal  goal. 

This  seems  like  comic  philosophy  in  face  of  the  world  now 
marching  gaily  to  the  tune  of  progress.  But  in  spite  of  the 
professedly  regnant  Zeitgeist  of  progress,  one  may  detect  much 
of  the  very  opposite  spirit  in  literature,  and  many  forms  of  the 
reactionary  spirit  in  all  the  spheres  of  modern  life.  It  need 
only  be  noted  that  its  heart  is  pessimistic,  its  head  Oriental,  its 
goal  Brahm  or  Nirvanah,  or  non-existence  of  personality  in  the 
Unconscious. 

This  is  the  real  "yellow  peril"  in  our  modern  Occidental 
world.  It  is  the  spirit  of  the  anti-Christ,  the  anti-logos,  the  anti- 
rational  and  the  anti-progress  view  of  the  world,  as  a  process  of 
development  towards  full  realization  of  humanity  into  a  King- 
dom or  Republic  of  God  on  earth. 

Everyone  who  is  raising  the  crab-cry  is  flying  in  the  face  of 
our  western  form  of  civilization,  and  aiding  and  abetting  the 
"yellow  peril." 

Even  the  cry  "Back  to  Jesus" — to  the  historical  Jesus,  who 
lived  and  died  and  was  buried  centuries  ago,  means  a  negation 
of  the  hard  earned  forms  of  Christian  culture  of  the  intervening 
centuries.  And,  put  it  in  the  subjective  form  of  the  religious 
feeling  that  was  in  the  heart  of  Jesus,  as  Sabatier  and  Harnack 


86  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

do,  it  is  a  further  reversion  to  the  Oriental  type ;  a  large  advance 
toward  esoteric  Buddhism.  Harnack's  lectures  are  professedly 
ad  populum  acadcmicum,  to  those  afflicted  with  the  various  ail- 
ments of  modern  culture.  He  does  not,  after  all,  take  mod- 
em culture  seriously.  Or,  he  does,  and  he  does  not.  But 
in  devastating  historical  Christianity  he  runs  into  such  utter 
subjectivism  as  leads  logically,  as  it  always  historically  has  led, 
towards  the  Oriental,  pessimistic  view  of  man  and  the  world. 
Rational  authority  there  is  none.  The  freedom  of  capricious 
feeling  soon  tires,  and  non-existence  becomes  a  welcome  goal. 
The  freedom  of  Oriental  thought  is  the  freedom  of  non-exist- 
ence— all  forms  of  empirical,  historical  existence  being  bad. 

Literally,  back  to  anything  means,  and  finally  leads  back  to 
hlank.  And  that  is  where  the  cry,  back  to  the  historical  Jesus, 
and  then,  back  to  a  personal  feeling  in  the  heart  of  one  man  out 
of  millions  of  men — that  is  back  to  Jesus  apart  from  historical 
Christianity,  leads.  It  is  back  to  a  feeling  of  an  unmediated 
relation  to  God — ^back  to  Neo-Platonic  ecstasy — a  swoon  of 
man's  rational  nature,  and  then  an  awakening  to  a  pessimistic 
view  of  reality — to  despair  and  a  longing  to  cease  to  be,  a  long- 
ing for  Nirvanah,  an  absorption  in  Brahm,  in  the  unconscious. 

So  back  to  Jesus  of  history — ^back  to  a  Christ  without  his- 
torical Christianity — back  to  a  filial  feeling  in  the  heart  of"  Jesus 
— all  this  backwardness  is  one  of  negation  that  ends  in  nothing 
that  we  can  know — nothing  that  can  validate  itself — a  super- 
sensuous  something  that  eludes  our  grasp,  and  soon  passes  away 
into  an  illusory  form  of  abnormal  consciousness. 

Again  we  note  what  a  meagre  view  is  left  us  of  the  historical 
Jesus  by  these  puritanical  critics,  who  would  have  a  gospel  with- 
out Christianity,  and  a  Jesus  without  the  Church's  interpretation 
of  his  indwelling,  energizing  presence.  They  woul  fain  "re-dis- 
cover Jesus"  by  taking  away  all  these  interpretations  of  him. 
They  see  that  St.  John's  and  St.  Paul's  conceptions  were  inter- 
pretations, and  taking  these  away ;  taking  away  all  that  anyone 
has  thought  and  said  about  Jesus,  they  finally  leave  us  with  only 


I 

SABATIER,  HARNACK  AND  LOISY  87 

a  few  shreds  of  genuine  Gospel  history  for  a  portrait  of  Jesus  of 
Nazareth.  But  even  then  they  must  allow  that  Jesus  interpreted 
himself  in  the  light  of  a  Messianic  kingdom.  This,  however,  is 
also  to  be  eliminated  as  a  mistaken  view  that  he  had  as  to  his 
own  person  and  work. 

Let  as  little  remain  as  their  arbitrary  ideal  permits,  we  can 
easily  see  that  the  critics  cannot  so  dis-conscious  themselves  as 
to  avoid  interpreting  Jesus  in  light  of  their  modern  conceptions. 
At  best  they  are  only  doing,  as  individuals,  what  the  Church  has 
done  collectively.  They  cannot  get  back  face  to  face  with  Jesus 
of  Nazareth  as  he  was,  apart  from  what  he  is  to  them,  as  well 
as  what  he  was  to  his  early  disciples.  At  best  it  is  a  choice  of 
private,  or  of  social  interpretation.  The  social  interpretation  is 
age-long  and  corporate.  The  private  interpretation  is  ephem- 
eral. 

We  must  say  then,  that  we  cannot  have  a  Christ  without 
Christianity.  The  historical  Christ  is  the  Christ  of  the  Church. 
No  mere  recrudescence  of  the  empirical  man  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
is  possible,  or,  if  possible,  desirable.  That  would  give  us  a 
dead  and  absent  Christ,  a  Christ  "after  the  flesh,"  so  that  we 
could  only  speak  metaphorically  of  Christ  present  in  our  hearts. 
This  could  only  mean  the  emotion  roused  in  our  hearts  by  the 
recall  in  memory  of  the  meagre  portrait  of  the  historical  Jesus 
left  us  by  these  critics. 

We  must  interpret  Jesus.  There  is  no  choice  in  the  matter, 
if  we  would  have  any  Jesus.  The  only  choice  is  that  between 
the  subjective  interpretation  of  individuals,  and  the  objective 
one  of  the  Church  of  the  centuries.  If  we  must  be  hypnotized, 
to  speak  in  metaphor,  we  can  choose  between  auto-hypnosis  and 
that  of  the  larger,  objective  form. 

One  who  takes  a  historical  view  of  any  institution ;  one  who 
wishes  to  get  away  from  his  subjective  prejudices  to  an  objective 
rational  view,  will  demur  to  the  peculiarly  narrow  and  subjective 
view  of  Christianity  held  by  Sabatier  and  Harnack,  They  both 
profess  to  treat  the  subject  as  historians.     They  do  nothing  of 


88  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

the  sort.  Historians  treat  of  actualities.  They  treat  religion  as 
an  inner  subjective  feeling,  spirit  or  essence.  The  historical 
parts  of  their  books  treat  of  historical  actualities,  which  they 
consider  as  mere  husks  that  do  not  even  perform  their  function 
of  husks,  to  protect  and  nurture  the  kernel. 

There  is  no  more  specious  falsehood  than  that  which  treats 
of  essence  as  apart  from  its  manifestation.  It  is  just  as  abstract 
and  untrue  as  that  which  takes  the  brute  actual  as  the  whole  of 
reality.  Essence  is  a  category  of  relativity.  It  always  relates 
itself  to  that  of  manifestation.  An  essence  that  does  not  appear, 
that  does  not  manifest  itself,  show  itself  in  objective  form,  is  a 
mere  will-o'-the-wisp  that  perverse  subjectivists  pursue,  when 
they  become  pessimistic  in  regard  to  the  world  of  actualities. 
It  is  not  a  sane  or  wholesome — ^not  an  objective  or  rational  cate- 
gory when  divorced  from  that  to  which  it  relates.  So  when  one 
wishes  to  get  at  the  bottom  of  things — at  the  ground  or  essence 
of  religion  apart  from  its  historical  manifestations,  he  is  look- 
ing for  an  abstraction.  Essence  as  ground  is  always  a  ground  of 
existence.  Existence  springs  from  and  takes  up  and  preserves 
its  ground,  only  in  the  form  of  actualities.  Mere  brute  actuali- 
ties— mere  sensuous  realities — well,  they  may  also  be  will-o'-the- 
wisps  of  metaphysical  scientists.  But  actualities  are  for  in- 
telligence always  intelligent,  purposive  actualities.  Any  actual- 
ity is  more  concrete  than  its  essence.  It  is  at  least  a  grade  of 
reality  and  rationality.  The  essence  is  nothing  but  an  abstrac- 
tion that  exists  only  in  the  more  concrete  form  of  actuality.  A 
cause  that  has  no  effect,  is  no  cause.  An  essence  that  has  no 
manifestation  is  no  essence.  Mere  potentiality  is  as  good  as 
nothing.  It  is  in  the  actual,  that  the  whole  of  its  potency  is  mani- 
fested. What  is  not  manifested  must  ever  remain  an  unknown. 
An  unuttered,  un-outered  essence  is  something  that  no  rational 
mind  can  deal  with — especially  no  historical  student.  The  real 
is  the  actual,  and  every  form  of  the  actual  is  a  phase  or  degree  of 
the  rational.  It  is  the  manifestation — the  self-revelation  of  its 
own  ground  or  essence,  and  of  the  whole  of  its  essence.     So 


SABATIER,  HARNACK  AND  LOISY  89 

with  all  the  categories  of  relativity — form  and  content,  inner  and 
outer,  the  whole  and  its  parts.  They  are  all  abstractions.  The 
concrete  is  the  actual.  The  style  is  the  man.  The  content  is  the 
form.  The  outer  is  the  inner,  its  inmost  outerance.  The  bad- 
acting  man  has  not  a  good  will,  nor  the  selfish  man  a  good  heart. 
The  good-will  which  wills  nothing  good,  is  as  good  as  no  will. 
Let  us  therefore  have  done  with  treating  of  religion  under  these 
abstract  categories  of  essence ;  of  the  innner  as  opposed  to  the 
outer,  of  the  kernel  without  the  husk,  of  the  spirit  without  the 
body.  Let  us  treat  of  it  as  an  actuality — a  concrete  unity  of  the 
inner  and  outer,  of  essence  and  manifestation;  always  remem- 
bering that  an  actuality  is  not  a  merely  physical  thing,  but  a  self- 
utterance  of  some  phase  of  reason. 

The  historical  treatment  of  religion  then,  we  insist,  must  be 
confined  to  its  actualized  forms. 

It  is  true,  that  this  has  not  the  last  and  truest  word  to  say  in 
the  matter.  If  we  are  to  intellectually  validate  our  religion,  we 
shall  have  to  go  to  the  higher  point  of  view  of  philosophy.  We 
shall  have  to  see  what  the  real,  ultimate  Actual  is,  in  the  light  of 
which  we  can  see  the  degrees  of  reality  to  be  found  in  all  the 
forms  of  nature,  and  in  all  the  institutions  of  humanity.  That 
is,  we  shall  have  to  rise  to  the  plane  where,  "the  real  is  the  ra- 
tional and  the  rational  the  real,"  in  order  to  see  the  phase  of 
reality  in  every  form  of  actuality — ^matter,  life,  the  institutions  of 
the  family,  state  and  church. 

Here  we  must  find  an  ideal-actual  First  Principle,  pure, 
Actuality — the  Actus  Purus  of  the  scholastics — as  the  efficient 
and  final  cause  of  the  whole  process — of  the  whole  historical  de- 
velopment of  the  various  forms  of  empirical  actualities.  As  all 
development  implies  imperfection  in  that  which  is  developing,  it 
also  implies  a  final  cause  or  end  or  self -realized  form,  that  is 
potent  as  an  efficient  cause  of  change  from  a  lower  to  a  higher 
form  of  empirical  actuality.  So  a  history  of  religions  and  a 
science  of  religion  are  always  to  be  followed  by  a  philosophy  of 
religion,  for  its  ultimate  justification. 


90  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

We  may  have  a  psychology  of  religion,  or  the  psychological 
basis  of  religion  with  Sabatier,  but  that  is  no  rational  justifica- 
tion of  religion,  any  more  than  a  psychology  of  illusions  is  a 
justification  of  illusions.  So,  too,  we  may  have  a  history  of  re- 
ligion in  all  its  forms,  but  that  is  no  justification  of  religion  in 
any  form.  When  one  comes  to  a  validating  of  religion,  and  a 
justification  of  any  form  of  it,  one  is  forced  to  the  philosophical 
point  of  view.  But  neither  Sabatier  nor  Harnack  rises  to  that 
plane.  They  remain  on  the  psychological  and  historical  plane. 
Man  is  by  nature — using  nature  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the 
term — a  religious  being.  Psychologically,  he  cannot  help  being 
religious,  even  if  he  be  an  atheist.  Historically,  this  psycho- 
logical necessity  manifests  itself  in  various  forms.  An  ideal  of 
the  essence  of  religion  is  set  up,  by  which  to  criticise  all  forms 
of  the  manifestation  of  this  psychological  necessity.  This  ideal 
is  purely  a  subjective  one — a  personal  feeling,  a  nondescript 
form  of  emotion — at  best  a  symbolical  form  of  representation, 
as  the  sense  of  filial  relation  to  the  Heavenly  Father — a  symbol 
of  man's  relation  to  the  Great  Unknowable.  This  forthwith  is 
taken  as  the  essence  of  Christianity.  Then  every  form  or 
historical  manifestation  of  Qiristianity  is  invalidated,  because 
it  has  outerances  of  more  concrete  reality.  What  is  "the  es- 
sence of  Christianity?"  asks,  Harnack.  What  is  "the  religion 
of  the  Spirit"  as  utterly  opposed  to  all  religions  of  authority  ? 
asks  Sabatier.  Their  answer  is,  that  it  is  not  historical  Christi- 
anity— not  any  form  of  actual  Christianity,  but  an  essence  that  is 
impotent  to  outer  itself. 

Their  object  is  to  reconcile  religion  with  the  modern  scien- 
tific view  of  the  universe.  But  this  scientific  view  always  treats 
of  historical  objective  actualities.  Their  reconciliation — under 
the  specious  guise  of  the  abstract  categories  of  essence  and  spirit 
— consists  in  an  elimination  of  objective  actualities,  and  a  plac- 
ing of  religion  in  the  sphere  of  what,  to  science,  is  subjective  and 
illusory.     Science  remains,  but  religion  is  in  the  realm  of  ne- 


SABATIER,  HARNACK  AND  LOISY  91 

science,  which  is,  for  a  rational  man,  the  realm  of  non-entity — 
of  fiction,  not  of  fact. 

To  justify  intellectually  any  human  activity,  even  though  it 
be  a  psychological  necessity,  one  must  rationalize  it.  They  put 
religion  beyond  the  realm  of  rationality,  and  appeal  only  to 
feeling — to  a  capricious  subjective  emotion,  of  which  science 
and  modern  culture  give  anything  but  a  rational  justification. 
Their  whole  contention  seems  to  be  that  religion  cannot  be  man- 
ifested ;  that  it  is  an  inner  essence  that  cannot  outer  itself ;  that 
every  form  of  its  manifestation  is  an  impotent  attempt  at  self- 
expression — a  devolution  rather  than  an  evolution.  We  are  not 
concerned  to  identify  any  and  every  stage  of  an  evolution  with 
the  goal  and  finished  product.  But  we  must  appreciate  each 
phase  as  a  stage  in  a  process  that  is  a  progress. 

The  estimation  of  the  degree  of  reality,  belonging  to  any 
phase  of  a  developing  process,  belongs  to  philosophy.  Philos- 
ophy does  not  construct  religion  or  any  other  form  of  human  in- 
stitution, but  it  must  seek  to  construe  it,  to  see  its  place  in  the  or- 
ganic system. 

Science  and  history  deal  with  objective  actualities.  They 
have  the  first  word  to  say,  if  not  the  last,  as  to  what  Christianity 
is,  as  an  historical  actuality. 

So  we  may  insist  that  these  writers  should  have  at  least  the 
historical  spirit  and  that  they  treat  religion  fairly  on  the  stand- 
point of  modern  scientific  culture — that  they  deal  with  Christi- 
anity as  an  historical  actuality.  If  Harnack  did  this  he  would 
answer  his  question,  "What  is  Christianity,"  by  saying  that  it  is 
historical  Christianity,  in  all  its  diverse  forms  of  manifestation. 
That  of  course  is  not  the  ultimate  answer,  but  it  is  the  only 
answer  that  is  allowable  from  the  historical  and  scientific  view  of 
the  matter.  Of  an  inner  spirit,  an  unactualized  essence,  neither 
history  nor  science  can  take  any  account. 

When  we  come  to  the  philosophical  point  of  view,  we  can 
criticise  every  actual  form  of  Christianity,  because  every  form 
of  the  empirical  actual  is  in  a  process  of  development,  and 


93  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

therefore  in  an  imperfect  form.  We  can  say  that  "the  Chris- 
tianity of  men  has  always  been  profoundly  inferior  to  the 
Christianity  of  God" ;  that  the  absolute  religion  has  never  had 
historical  form,  but  that  all  forms  have  been  developments 
toward  and  through  the  absolute  religion — the  at-one-ment  of 
man  with  God.  But  the  final  cause  is  always  a  non-empirical 
cause — one  with  which  strict  science  has  no  concern,  and  phi- 
losophy all  concern. 

The  personal  religion  that  Jesus  had,  his  conscious  sinless 
unity  with  the  Father  —  that  is  not  historical  Christianity. 
Christianity  is  the  religion  founded  upon  the  person  and  work 
of  Jesus,  whose  ultimate  aim  is  to  bring  all  men  into  this 
conscious  sinless  relation  to  God.  To  that  end  Christ  gave 
apostles,  prophets,  evangelists,  pastors,  teachers,  for  the  per- 
fecting of  the  saints,  for  the  edifying  (de*v^eloping,  upbuilding) 
of  his  body,  the  Church,  till  all  together  come  unto  the  measure 
of  the  stature  of  the  fullness  of  Christ,  so  that  we  "may  grow 
up  (develop)  into  Him  in  all  things,  which  is  the  head,  even 
Christ."  (Ephesians  iv,  11-15).  In  its  first  historical  form, 
Christianity  may  have  been  little  more  than  a  Jewish  sect, 
as  these  writers  hold  it  to  have  been.  But  the  whole  his- 
tory of  Christianity  has  been  a  development  into  wider  and 
higher  forms — soon  taking  its  place  as  a  world-religion  on  its 
way  to  take  its  place  as  the  world-religion.  The  subjective 
religion  that  Jesus  had,  was  not  Christianity.  Historically  his 
personal  religion  was  the  Jewish  religion.  He  was  a  conformist. 
The  Son  of  God  became  the  son  of  man,  that  He  might  make  the 
sons  of  men  sons  of  God  and  brethren  in  his  corporate  king- 
dom. The  history  of  Christianity  shows  the  process  of  this 
work.  Its  historical  transformations  are  stages  in  this  edifying 
process.  The  final  end  or  purpose  of  the  Saviour's  work  abides 
as  a  measure  of  progress,  and  as  a  standard  by  means  of  which 
we  may  see  that  one  phase  of  this  development  is  a  higher  stage 
than  another. 

Christianity  has  never  been  all  in  the  air,  or  all  in  mere  sub- 


SABATIER,  HARNACK  AND  LOISY  93 

jective  feeling.  It  has  never  been  an  unincarnate  spirit — an 
essence  without  manifestation,  a  soul  without  a  body.  Surely 
historical  students  with  such  full  appreciation  of  the  modern 
scientific  view  of  reality  should  be  the  last  to  take  this  merely 
subjective  view  of  any  human  institution. 

A  true  development  implies  both  the  transformation  and  ele- 
vation of  a  primitive  form.  Let  Sabatier  and  Harnack  make  as 
little  as  they  do  of  the  primitive  form  of  Christianity,  they 
are  bound  to  make  more  of  its  historical  transformations  than 
they  do.  A  developing  form  never  retains,  and  can  never  go 
back  to,  its  primitive  form.  The  transformations  then  must 
have  been  for  the  better  or  the  worse.  If  for  the  worse,  as 
they  contend,  then  one  can  only  speak  of  the  devil  rather  than 
of  God  in  history — at  least  in  Christian  history.  Historical 
Christianity  has  never  identified  the  Church  militant  with  the 
Church  triumphant.  That  is  the  goal,  toward  which  it  is  al- 
ways making,  perhaps  at  best,  certainly  at  least,  asymptotical 
progress.  Its  movement  toward  that  one  far-off  divine  event 
is  at  least  the  living  logic  of  its  transformations.  Let  his- 
torical students  have  done  with  this  irrational  talk  about  Chris- 
tianity as  a  mere  essence.  Let  them  study  historical  Chris- 
tianity as  a  developing  form  of  actuality.  Let  them  take  relig- 
ion in  its  objective,  historical,  concrete  form  of  creed  and  cult, 
and  discipline  and  organization;  as  the  manifestation  and  the 
nurturing  of  Christian  life. 

(i)  They  will  find  that  "back  to  Jesus,"  means  back  to  a 
Jewish  Messiah,  the  founder  of  a  kingdom  of  heaven  on  earth — 
or  rather  the  one,  who,  as  the  culmination  of  the  Jewish  form 
of  the  kingdom,  sought  to  fulfill  it  in  higher  form.  The  central 
teaching  of  Jesus  was  concerning  this  fuller  coming  of  the 
kingdom  on  earth.  The  fuller  coming  of  the  kingdom  was  or- 
ganically related  with  and  rooted  primarily  in  the  historical  re- 
ligion of  his  own  nation.  It  is  the  wildest  sort  of  historical  in- 
sanity, to  read  into  His  words :  "the  Kingdom  of  God  is  within 
(ivrSt)  you,"  a  modernized  subjective  conception  of  an  in- 


94  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

visible  kingdom.  "Within  you"  is  historically  as  well  as  gram- 
matically to  be  translated  "in  your  midst,"  just  as  Jesus  himself 
was  then  in  their  midst.  That  was  the  "good  news,"  the  es- 
sence, if  you  will,  of  the  gospel.  It  was  a  kingdom  on  earth. 
It  was  to  be  objective  and  social,  as  we  see  from  most  of  the 
parables  of  Jesus. 

(2)  They  will  learn  that  back  to  primitive  Christianity 
means  back  to  a  religious  community,  founded  upon  the  person 
and  work  of  Jesus  and  that,  not  upon  the  merely  historical  Jesus 
of  Nazareth,  who  died  and  was  buried,  but  upon  the  risen  and 
glorified  Christ.  Not  for  a  moment  in  the  organic  life  of  Chris- 
tianity through  the  centuries,  has  it  ever  rested  upon  the  Jesus  of 
history — if  the  term  history  be  taken  in  its  empirical  sense.  It 
was  not  upon  the  memories  of  a  Jesus  who  had  been,  but  upon 
relations  with  a  Christ  who  was  then  and  there,  that  Christianity 
became  a  religion.  They  will  also  find  that  creed  and  polity 
and  cult  are  essential  elements  of  Christianity. 

(3)  Then  they  will  trace  all  the  historical  transformations  of 
this  primitive  form  of  Christianity,  as  stages  of  development  of 
its  fullness  and  totality  of  life ;  stages  of  development  of  this 
religious  movement  within  the  Jewish  religion  into  the  form 
and  power  of  a  universal  religion.  They  will  acknowledge 
the  impossibility  of  any  living  institution  forever  keeping  its 
primitive  undeveloped  form.  They  will  then  cease  to  regard 
the  whole  development  of  the  organization,  doctrine  and  wor- 
ship of  Christianity  as  foreign  to  its  essence,  or  as  a  progressive 
degeneration.  Their  only  care  will  be  to  see  how  the  Church 
has  always  had  at  heart  the  continuity  of  concrete  Christianity  in 
its  expansive  forms  of  life  in  new  ages  and  circumstances.  In  a 
word,  they  will  treat  the  history  of  Christianity  as  they  would 
treat  any  other  religion  or  institution,  under  the  concept  of  de- 
velopment rather  than  under  that  of  degeneracy.  Christianity 
never  has  been  a  mere  essence,  a  soul  without  a  body,  a  Tnind 
without  a  creed,  a  will  without  a  deed.     Like  all  life  it  institutes 


SABATIER,  HARNACK  AND  LOISY  95 

and  organizes  itself  and  adapts  its  environment  to  itself — else  it 
dies. 

Christianity  then  is,  for  the  historical  student,  that  which  the 
Church  has  thought  and  done  through  the  centuries  of  its 
existence. 

If  they  cannot  accept  Christianity's  own  interpretation  of 
itself;  if  they  have  not  a  philosophy  of  history  that  will  justify 
its  expanding  forms  of  life,  they  will  at  least  treat  it  as  a  de- 
velopment of  one  phase  of  the  psychological  necessity  for  men 
to  be  religious,  though  a  psychological  necessity  need  not  be 
a  rational  necessity.  Christianity's  own  interpretation  is,  in 
brief,  the  following:  The  Eternal  Son  of  God,  the  Eternal, 
immanent  Logos  was  incarnated  in  Jesus.  He  entered  per- 
sonally into  the  limitations  of  human  life — lived,  worked,  taught, 
died,  was  buried,  rose  again  from  the  dead,  was  excarnated  and 
glorified.  But  the  living  Christ  established  a  kingdom,  sent  the 
Holy  Spirit  to  inspire  and  enlighten  in  the  work  of  upbuilding 
this  kingdom.  His  divine  work  is  continued  in  and  through  the 
historical  media  of  his  earthly  kingdom.  That  kingdom  is  not  a 
body  without  a  soul.  Christ  is  its  soul — an  ever  living,  ever 
present,  ever  working  Christ.  Nor  is  it  a  soul  without  a  body. 
It  is  an  extension  of  the  incarnation.  What  the  body  of  Jesus 
was  to  the  incarnate  Logos,  that  his  kingdom  has  ever  continued 
to  be,  a  progressive  reincarnation  of  the  perfect  man.  Its  limi- 
tations are  those  common  to  every  historical  form  of  existence, 
just  as  the  body  of  Jesus  was  subject  to  the  limits  of  temporal 
existence — limits  as  to  health,  life,  omniscience,  omnipotence. 
The  child  Jesus  "grew  and  waxed  strong  in  spirit,"  he  "in- 
creased in  wisdom  and  stature  and  in  favor  with  God  and  man."^ 
He  was  subject  unto  his  parents,^  was  made  "perfect  through 
sufferings."-''  So,  too,  the  Church  on  earth,  while  never  identify- 
ing itself  with  the  Church  triumphant,  has  ever  held  herself 

*  St.  Luke's  Gospel,  II,  vv.  40  and  52 

'Ibid.,  V.  51. 

'  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  II,  v.  la 


96  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

to  be  the  earthly  medium  for  the  continuous  inworking  of  the 
Logos  into  humanity.  She  has  sought  to  be  a  religion  of  au- 
thority, because  she  tries  to  express  and  spread  abroad  the  relig- 
ion of  the  Spirit,  under  historical  limitations.  She  has  had  no 
other  motive  for  her  existence  than  the  preservation  and  propa- 
gation of  the  gospel — the  good  news  of  a  kingdom  of  God  on 
earth.  Often  she  has  been  untrue  to  her  own  principles,  un- 
faithful to  her  trust  and  degenerate  in  her  life.  But  she  has  the 
perpetual  presence  of  the  Logos  to  recall  her  from  her  wander- 
ings and  reform  her  of  her  abuses.  Her  belief  in  the  perpetual 
presence  of  the  living  Christ  is  vastly  different  from  that  of  any 
merely  idealized  memories  of  an  historical,  a  dead  Jesus,  how- 
ever uniquely  religious  and  holy  he  may  have  been.  She  has 
ever  regarded  herself  only  as  a  vestibule  to  the  perfected 
kingdom,  hence  as  a  provisional  and  transitional  and  develop- 
ing organization ;  recognizing  that  the  working  of  the  imma- 
nent Logos  is  subject  to  all  the  conditions  of  historical  exist- 
ence. Her  cry  has  never  been  "back  to  a  past  Christ,"  but 
rather  that  of  "life  in  the  present  Christ  and,  through  this, 
forward  into  the  measure  of  the  stature  of  the  fullness  of 
Christ,"  gradually  "increasing  in  wisdom  and  stature  and  in 
favor  with  God  and  man." 

Such,  briefly,  is  the  Church's  interpretation  of  itself.  Such 
is  its  philosophy  of  Christian  history.  Then  the  Church  justifies 
her  own  existence  and  rationalizes  her  own  authority  as  an 
ecclesia  doc  ens,  the  earthly  medium  or  body  for  housing  and 
educating  and  extending  the  religious  relation  of  man — or  rather 
of  men,  with  God.  For  in.  no  historical  form  has  she  ever  taken 
the  purely  subjective,  individualistic  view  held  by  Harnack  and 
Sabatier.  The  Church  has  always  been  a  social  institution,  a 
corporate  body,  with  corporate  aims,  creeds  and  worship. 

However  little  the  empirical  form  of  the  historical  method^ 
can  accept  the  Church's  own  interpretation  of  herself,  it  is  bound 
to  treat  the  Church  as  it  does  any  other  form  of  a  developing 
*  Cf.  Chap.  IV,  p. 


SABATIER,  HARNACK  AND  LOISY  97 

institution.  But  that  is  what  neither  Harnack  nor  Sabatiet 
does.  Their  method  resembles  that  of  an  anatomist  of  a  dead 
body,  or,  at  best,  that  of  a  student  of  biology,  faulting  the 
growing  form  for  changing;  faulting  the  full  grown  man  for 
not  having  remained  a  child,  every  stage  of  growth  being  ab- 
normal, and  the  whole  process  a  putrefaction,  or  at  best  a  petri- 
faction. 

With  the  philosophical  form  of  the  historical  method^  all  the 
facts  as  to  the  various  transformations  of  Christianity  which 
they  bring  out,  are  fully  accepted.  All  the  results  of  Biblical 
criticism,  of  historical  investigations,  of  modern  culture  in  gen- 
eral are  approved,  so  far  as  they  are  proved.  But  the  interpre- 
tation of  these  facts  is  vastly  different.  The  exponents  of  this 
other  school  have  an  optimistic,  because  they  have  a  rational, 
philosophy  of  history.  The  world  is  not  a  progressionless  pro- 
cession nowheres  in  particular.  It  is  not  an  eternal  identity  of 
a  fixed  sum  of  matter  or  force  always  equated  in  every  form  of 
their  changes.  The  rather  it  is  a  process,  through,  and  to  the 
rational.  The  physical  and  the  mechanical  are  imbedded  in  the 
metaphysical  and  teleological.  Or  rather  the  metaphysical  is 
immanent  in  the  physical.  There  is  logic,  reason  in  its  full  con- 
crete sense,  in  all  history.  History  is  a  development  towards 
something — a  far-off  divine  consummation.  This  final  destina- 
tion is  an  immanent  final  cause,  the  only  efficient  cause  that  any- 
one reading  history  as  rational  can  assume. 

Science  now  dispenses  with  any  efficient  causality.  Philos- 
ophy restores  the  abandoned  concept  of  causality  under  the  form 
of  final  cause.  The  history  of  man  thus  viewed,  is  a  process 
that  is  a  progress  into  freedom,  because  it  is  a  process  into  ra- 
tionality— a  process  of  man's  freedom  to  act,  not  as  he  pleases, 
but  in  accordance  with  the  authority  of  reason ;  a  process  of  man 
into  the  freedom  of  God's  service. 

Just  what  reason  is,  what  are  the  forms  of  God's  service  may, 
historically,  vary ;  nay  must  vary,  in  a  process  which  is  a  devel- 
*  Cf.  Chap.  IV  of  this  volume. 

7 


98  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

opment.  The  spirit  is  ever,  historically,  in  a  body ;  the  Logos 
is  ever,  historically,  incarnated.  The  philosophic  form  of  the 
historical  method  then  seeks  the  logic,  the  reason,  the  ever  in- 
creasing manifestation  of  its  first  constitutive  principle  in  his- 
torical forms.  It  views  the  history  of  the  sons  of  men  becoming, 
corporately,  the  sons  of  God ;  as  an  education  of  the  race  under 
the  Divine  Pedagogue.  It  studies  the  history  of  all  human 
achievements  as  the  outerances,  under  historical  limitations,  of 
the  immanent  Logos.  It  studies  the  specifically  sacred  in  the 
same  way  that  it  does  the  nominally  secular.  It  studies  the  his- 
tory of  religion,  and  the  history  of  every  religion  in  the  same 
genetic  way. 

When  it  comes  to  Christianity,  it  falters  not  in  seeing  it  or- 
ganically related  to  other  religions  and,  much  less,  at  seeing  the 
logic,  the  reason  in  all  its  historical  transformations.  It  takes 
up  all  its  empirical  events — the  life  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  the 
founding  of  a  Jewish  sect,  the  Hellenization  of  this  sect,  the 
Romanizing  and  the  Germanizing  of  it.  It  takes  Christianity  to 
be  what  it  has  become  through  all  these  historical  transforma- 
tions, as  a  developed  form  of  primitive  Christianity.  Refusing 
to  read  any  history  as  merely  secular,  much  less  does  it  refuse  to 
read  Christian  history  as  being  alogical.  It  accepts,  as  material 
for  its  interpretation,  all  that  modern  research  and  criticism  have 
to  offer  as  proved.  But  it  declines  their  merely  empirical  analy- 
sis when  presented  as  the  synthesis,  the  life,  the  soul,  the  reason 
of  the  whole  process.  It  declines  mere  individualism  in  favor 
of  the  corporate  view  of  man  in  his  religious  relation,  as  well 
as  in  his  specific  relation  to  intellectual  reason. 

Neither  religion  nor  abstract  reason  is  a  private  possession  or 
acquisition.  Both  are  social,  corporate  products.  And  both 
are  validated  only  under  the  metaphysic  of  an  immanent  princi- 
ple or  Logos  in  the  historical  processes  of  their  attainment. 
Unassisted  reason  in  the  individual  is  a  faction.  So,  too,  is  unas- 
sisted religion.  But  corporate  forms  of  both  are  validated  only 
by  a  sufficient  final  cause.     The  merely  phenomenal  causes  of 


SABATIER,  HARNACK  AND  LOISY  99 

empirical  facts  are  never  sufficient  causes.  Non-rational,  and 
non-moral,  and  non-religious,  phenomenal  causes  can  never  val- 
idate reason  nor  morality  nor  religion.  In  their  corporate  forms 
they  must  still  be  incorporated  into  the  superphenomenal,  the 
metaphysical,  the  First  and  Final  Cause  to  be  seen  even  as 
progressive  forms  of  reason. 

In  some  form,  the  conception  of  the  incarnation  of  the  Divine 
Logos,  some  conception  of  the  immanent  energizing  in  the 
process  of  a  transcendent  First  Cause,  must  be  used  in  interpret- 
ing any  phenomenal  change  as  a  development.  Still  even,  the 
end  is  not  yet.  The  actual  in  any  process  is  not  yet  the  rational, 
and  yet  every  form  of  the  empirical  actual  is  a  phase  of  the 
rational,  or  else  we  must  throw  away  the  whole  conception  of 
evolution.  We  cannot,  then,  take  the  twentieth  century  view  of 
what  is  scientific  or  rational  as  ultimate.  The  fortieth  century, 
perhaps  the  twenty-first  century,  may  pronounce  as  severe  judg- 
ment upon  the  views  of  modern  culture  and  science  as  we  do 
upon  those  of  the  Middle  Ages.  Doubtless  we  are  not  the 
people  and  wisdom  will  not  perish  with  us.  Doubtless  we  are 
"foremost  in  the  files  of  time,"  yet  we 

"Doubt  not  through  the  ages  one  increasing  ■pntposo.  runs. 

And  the  thoughts  of  men  are  widened  by  the  process  of  the  suns." 

The  Zeitgeist  of  any  Zeit  is  temporal.  It  has  its  truth  and 
'reality  only  as  a  phase  of  the  immanent  Logos  in  an  historical 
process,  but  the  end  is  not  yet.  And  yet  the  present  is,  only  be- 
cause the  Absolute  is ;  because  it  is  a  phase  of  the  absolute  in 
historical  process. 

Here  we  are  brought  face  to  face  with  a  choice  of  Hercules. 
We  have  a  process.  But  a  process  of  what  and  to  what?  If  we 
take  modern  science  in  the  metaphysical  sense  of  some  of  its  ex- 
pounders, we  have  a  process  of  change  of  a  fixed  lot  of  empirical 
factors;  that  is,  a  change  of  the  collocations  of  these  factors, 
matter,  force,  ether,  electrons — a  convolution,  a  devolution,  a 
transformation,  but  eternally  the  same  old  realities— old  friends 
or  foes  with  new  faces.    Identity  reigns.    Difference  is  logically 


100  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

bowed  out,  and  we  are  in  a  world  of  process  which  is  chaos 
instead  of  Cosmos.  The  cyclic  theory  of  the  Stoics  is  the  ut- 
most possible.  Things,  institutions,  rise,  ripen  and  rot,  and 
then  the  process  begins  anew.  There  is  nothing  new  under  the 
sun,  at  least  nothing  new  that  shall  not  be  resolved  into  the 
old — the  eternally  real  matter,  or  force,  or  electrons,  or  the 
fixed  quantity  of  physical  energy  in  the  physical  universe. 
Farewell  then  to  any  centuries'  statement  of  reason  or  reality. 
Farewell  alas !  to  our  twentieth  century  view.  Farewell,  in 
fact,  to  reason,  if  reason  be  not  immanent  in  all  the  physical 
and  historical  processes  of  the  universe.  To  this  pass,  all  mod- 
ern scientific  metaphysics  is  brought.  There  is  no  possible 
avoiding  the  issue.  Either  immanent  reason.  Logos  or  final 
cause  is  in  the  process,  or  the  process  is  processionless,  or  at 
best  cyclic. 

The  other  choice  is  the  philosophical  one — that  reason,  final 
cause,  efficient  purpose  is  immanent  in  all  phenomenal  changes, 
causal  of  these  changes  being  a  development — a  process  towards 
a  goal,  stages  in  humanity's  realization  of  its  real  self,  phases 
of  rationality  and  of  reality  in  the  process. 

Under  this  philosophical  conception,  then,  every  phase  of 
actuality  must  pass  for  judgment  as  to  its  validity.  Religion  is 
certainty  one  of  the  phenomena  of  history.  I  mean  by  religion, 
not  the  subjective  feeling  in  the  heart,  but  an  objective,  his- 
torical, concrete  form  of  human  activity.  Christianity  is  a 
positive,  historical  form  of  religion,  claiming  to  be  ultimate 
in  its  principles,  but  only  relative  in  its  development.  Can  the 
claim  be  validated?  Certainly  not  on  the  view  of  empirical 
metaphysics.  In  fact,  nothing  can  be  validated — not  even  the 
views  of  modern  science  and  culture.  All  are  but  meaningless 
transformations  of  irrational  elements. 

What  validation,  if  any  validation  there  can  be,  on  the  philo- 
sophical standpoint?  The  claim  of  actual  Christianity,  that  is, 
of  historical  Christianity,  is  modest  enough.  It  is  only  the 
claim  to  be  the  relative  realization,  in  historical  processes,  of 


SABATIER,  HARNACK  AND  LOISY  loi 

the  Absolute  religion.  It  is  only  the  claim  to  be  the  organic, 
corporate,  foremost  phase  in  religion.  It  is  only  the  claim 
to  be  the  ever  expanding  form — the  ever  growing  incarnation 
of  the  religious  relation  of  humanity  to  its  primal  source  and 
final  end.  Even  its  creedal  claims  are  all  in  the  sphere  of  the 
process.  Its  quod  uhique,  quod  semper  et  quod  ah  omnibus 
creditum  est,  hoc  est  proprieque  catholicum,  is  always  pro- 
fessedly within  the  realm  of  development — static  stages  of  a 
dynamic  process,  and  hence  never  absolutely  infallible  and  ulti- 
mate. 

To  read  Christian  history  in  the  light  of  this  philosophical 
view,  is  simply  an  attempt  to  trace  the  concrete  logic  in  a  mass  of 
phenomenal  events — a  mass  of  feelings,  fancy,  imagination,  of 
human  creeds  and  deeds — of  phenomenal  facts.  It  is  to  take  re- 
ligion concretely — to  take  Christianity  historically,  objectively, 
externally,  if  you  will,  and  then  to  interpret  it  rationally,  as  the 
highest  phase  of  religious  actuality.  It  is  not  to  take  some  ab- 
stract, subjective,  individualistic  feeling:  some  modern's  en- 
lighted  view  as  to  its  essence.  For  it  has  always  been  too  potent 
to  be  mere  essence.  It  has  always  been  forceful  enough  to  be  a 
manifestation ;  to  be  a  visible  actuality.  It  has  always  been  a 
corporate,  institutional  concrete  form  of  phenomenal  actuality. 
It  has  always  been  something  objective,  of  which  the  scientific 
and  historical  student  can  take  cognizance.  It  stands  forth  in 
the  phenomenal  world  on  a  par  with  all  the  political  and  social  in- 
stitutions of  humanity.  As  such,  it  submits  to  the  same  rational 
criticism.  How  much  reason  in  it,  how  much  reality  ?  Not  how 
much  abstract  reason  of  the  eighteenth  or  the  twentieth  century, 
but  how  much  of  the  absolute  Reason  does  it  embody,  incarnate, 
manifest?  Concretely  and  historically,  it  consists  of  creed  and 
polity  and  cult,  as  all  religions  have  done.  Concretely,  it  has 
been  corporate,  not  individualistic.  Concretely,  it  has  been  a 
development,  not  a  fixed  identical  quantity.  Concretely,  it  has 
been — well,  let  us  say  life — but  a  life  that  has  not  been  mere 
essence,  but  a  life  with  a  body.     It  has  been  a  life  that  has 


102  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

mingled  with,  and  modified  all  the  concrete  relations  of  man — 
his  domestic,  social,  political;  his  artistic  and  philosophical  ac- 
tivities. It  has  been  a  forceful  force,  a  potent  potency.  Organ- 
ized, as  all  life  is  organized,  it  has  yet  spread  its  organic  fila- 
ments into  art,  literature,  politics — into  all  the  truly  human 
forms  of  self-activity.  No  merely  modern  enlightened  form  of 
culture  can  pick  out  an  abstract  element  and  call  it  the  essence 
of  Christianity.  Its  attempt  to  do  so  must  de-rationalize  all  its 
work.  Christianity  is  what  it  is.  It  is  what  it  is,  because  of 
what  it  has  become.  But,  finally,  it  has  become  what  it  is  not, 
because  of  phenomenal  cause,  which  are  now  eviscerated  of 
real  causality  in  science,  but  because  of  the  final  cause ;  because 
of  the  goal;  because  of  the  immanence  of  this  cause  in  phe- 
nomenal processes.  Aut  Caesar  aut  nullius.  Either  the  em- 
pirical or  the  philosophical  conception  of  reason  and  rational- 
ity ;  either  the  mechanical  or  the  teleological  conception  of  na- 
ture and  of  man  and  his  history.  The  teleological  easily  ac- 
cepts, takes  up  and  fulfills  the  mechanical,  but  the  mechanical 
can  never  take  up  and  fulfill  the  teleological.  The  war  is  to  the 
knife,  disguise  it  as  we  may  with  our  ephemeral  reconciliations 
of  religion  with  science.  Aut  Caesar  aut  nullius.  Either  meta- 
physical science  or  scientific  metaphysics.  That  it  is  the  ques- 
tion narrowed  to  a  point.  It  is  the  choice  of  Hercules.  It  is 
the  choice  between  reason  and  unreason,  between  fate  and  free- 
dom, between  relative  gnosticism  and  absolute  agnosticism. 
Let  the  issue  be  plainly  stated.  Let  the  empirical  scientific 
metaphysic  be  not  glossed  with  conceptions  of  an  anthro- 
pomorphic nature ;  let  the  rigorous  scientific  view  of  reason  and 
reality  be  stated  in  bald,  actual  form,  and  the  choice  then  be- 
comes a  pro  and  con,  between  a  logical  and  an  alogical  prin- 
ciple; between,  let  us  say  plainly,  between  a  divine  process  in 
temporal  conditions,  and  a  fortuitous  concourse  of  atoms,  a 
fortuitous  change  within  empirical  matter,  force,  ether,  elec- 
trons or  whatever  the  latest  empirical  analysis  may  show  to  be 


SABATIER,  HARNACK  AND  LOISY  103 

the  one  phenomenal  reahty,  masquerading  under  the  diverse 
forms  of  nature  and  humanity. 

We  are  brought  to  the  pass  either  to  hold  that  science  is 
merely  descriptive  of  phenomenal  changes  for  a  practical  end, 
having  nothing  to  say  about  ultimate  reality,  as  its  foremost 
representatives  grant,  or  to  hold  that  science  is  unhumani- 
tarian  and  atheistic.  There  is  no  possible  dodging  of  the  issue. 
Aut  Caesar  aut  nullius,  say  both  empirical  and  philosophical 
metaphysics.  Let  those  who  are  afflicted  with  the  ailments  of 
modern  culture;  with  their  hesitancy,  say,  to  be  religious,  not 
be  caught  by  the  glamour  thrown  over  their  metaphysics  by 
some  popularizers  of  science.  Instead  of  taking  modern  sci- 
ence for  what  it  is,  let  them  take  it  as  metaphysics.  Then  let 
them  have  the  courage  of  their  convictions  and  the  confessions 
of  Physicus^  will  be  their  confession — their  creed,  in  the  light 
of  which  beauty,  goodness  and  truth  cease  to  have  any  real 
reality.  As  students  of  the  objective,  we  are  not  concerned 
merely  with  the  religious  interpretation  of  experience ;  but  with 
the  philosophical  view,  in  the  light  of  which  nature  and  man 
and  all  human  institutions  are  to  receive  their  evaluations. 
This  view  comes,  by  reflective  analysis  of  concrete  experience, 
to  something  above  any  empirically  given  factors.  It  rises 
from  the  dependent  to  the  independent,  from  the  passively 
causal  to  the  causa  sui,  from  the  part  to  the  whole,  from  the 
phenomenal  to  the  noumenal,  from  the  mechanical  to  the  Final 
Cause,  from  the  irrational  to  the  Absolutely  Rational,  from  the 
chaos  in  whatever  transitory  form  it  may  assume,  to  Cosmos, 
and  from  Cosmos,  let  us  say  frankly,  to  an  immanent  Logos 
that  is  also  a  transcendent  Deity.  The  dialectic  of  all  forms 
of  reason,  of  all  categories  of  finite  thought  force  us  to  this 
ultimate  category  of  absolute  concrete  reason — God.  Or  the 
penalty  is  that  of  reversion  to  the  Oriental  conception — Brahm, 
the  Unconscious,  the  unknown  Unknowable  of  Spencer. 

Thought  is  capable  of  the  ascensio  mentis  ad  Deum.    Plato 

^  Cf.  Appendix.    Note  4. 


|C4  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

has  shown  this  in  his  Republic  (Bks.  VI  and  VII)  and  Aristotle 
in  his  Metaphysics  (Book  XI).  In  fact  this  is  the  contention 
of  all  positive,  catholic  philosophy.  All  men  acknowledge 
grades  of  knowing.  Science  passes  far  beyond  the  stage  of 
sense-perception.  It  uses  the  relating  categories  of  the  under- 
standing in  its  marvelous  work  of  describing  the  physical  uni- 
verse as  such.  Philosophy  goes  on  to  study  the  presuppositions 
of  such  a  description.  The  limits  of  physics  demand  a  meta- 
physic.  The  temporal,  the  spatial  and  all  things  therein  are,  as 
such,  finite.  The  finite  implies  the  infinite — is  only  finite  in 
virtue  of  the  infinite.  All  admit  this,  but  the  parting  of  ways  is 
at  the  question  of  knozving  this  implicate  of  the  finite.  Spencer 
asserts  its  existence,  power  and  universality  but  denies  that  it  is 
knowable ;  denies  that  thought  has  any  power  to  transcend  the 
finite.  Knowledge  is  confined  to  the  limits  of  the  sensuous 
by  Kant  in  his  First  Critique,  and  he  never  gets  beyond  the 
maintenance  of  the  faculty  of  faith  as  the  organ  of  communica- 
tion with  God  and  spiritual  realities.  Faith  is  not  a  potency  of 
reason  and  so  cannot  give  knowledge.  This  negative  side  of 
Kant  is  the  side  that  is  taken  by  the  Neo-Kantianer — ^by  those 
who  have  raised  the  cry  of  "Back  to  Kant,"  back  from  philos- 
ophy to  agnosticism — back  to  agnostic  realism  of  sensuous  phe- 
nomena from  the  realism  of  the  Absolute  Reason. 

The  root  difficulty  with  both  Sabatier  and  Harnack  is  that 
they  have  been  caught  with  this  Neo-Kantian  agnosticism.  We 
cannot  know  God.  Knowledge  is  only  of  the  sensuous.  We 
can  only  feel  and  believe  in  the  Unknowable  Absolute  as  a 
Father.  We  can  act  as  if  there  was  a  God,  if  it  conduces  to  our 
welfare.  We  can  be  pragmatists,  not  intellectualists,  in  all  the 
higher  activities  of  humanity.  In  a  way,  philosophy  is  to  blame 
for  this.  It  is  to  blame  so  far  as  it  defines  reason  as  the  merely 
abstract  reason  of  the  understanding.  Against  this  view  of  rea- 
son, Kant  in  his  Second  Critique,  and  modern  pragmatists  are 
right.  But  when  reason  is  conceived  concretely;  when  know- 
ing is  not  merely  discursive ;  when  thought  has  its  full  sweep. 


SABATIER,  HARNACK  AND  LOISY  105 

all  that  agnostics  and  pragmatists  contend  for  is  allowed.  Phi- 
losophy, as  such,  is  only  the  most  concrete  rational  knowledge 
of  the  same  data  that  sense  and  science  deal  with.  It  is  a 
knowledge  of  their  implications  and  necessary  presuppositions. 
The  ultimate  presupposition  of  all  finite  knowledge  is  absolute 
knowledge;  of  all  finite  reality,  absolute  reality;  of  all  finite 
consciousness,  absolute  Self-consciousness.  And  this  pre-sup- 
position  is  knowable  by  thought.  Being  known,  the  descent 
from  it  to  an  interpretation  of  the  time  and  space  process  fol- 
lows as  a  necessity.  It  is  known  as  God's  world.  He  is  its 
first  and  final  cause.  From  Him,  in  Him  and  towards  Him 
all  creation  lives  and  moves  and  has  its  being.  All  temporal 
actualities  are  interpreted  sub  specie  aeternitatis.  They  are  in 
a  process  from  and  to  the  Perfect.  The  process  is  teleological. 
It  is  thus  that  it  is  logical.  Any  other  view  leaves  all  knowl- 
edge and  reality  to  be  alogical.  Any  other  view  turns  even 
the  gnosticism  of  sense  and  science  into  agnosticism — leaves  us 
in  the  realm  of  things  and  relatives  and  processes,  that  are 
relative  to  an  unknowable.  This  of  course  is  alogism,  non- 
rationality.  Thought  out  fully  and  clearly  then,  we  have  the  in- 
tellectual scepticism  of  Hume — a  scepticism  that  he  applied  to 
common  sense  and  science  as  well  as  to  philosophy.  The  va- 
lidity of  thought,  logic,  knowledge  in  any  interpretation  of  the 
universe  rests  upon  the  reality  of  the  immanent  Logos.  It  is 
an  intellectual  surprise  when  we  find  Harnack  to  say,  "the  way 
we  conceive  the  world  and  ethics  does  not  point  to  the  existence 
of  any  A.oyos  at  all."^  This  must  have  been  a  slip  of  the  pen  of  a 
ready  writer.  For  with  such  a  conception,  all  logic  is  bowed 
out  of  the  world  and  out  of  discussions.  In  fact,  the  point  at 
issue  with  Harnack  is  the  only  point  at  issue  between  specula- 
tive thought,  and  historical  Christianity.  That  point  is  the  iden- 
tification of  the  eternal  Aoyos  with  the  historical  Qirist.  The 
Church  has  always  made  this  identification.     It  was  founded 

^  Harnack's  Essence  of  Christianity,  p.  220. 


io6  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

upon  it.  The  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation — the  whole  of  her 
Christology,  is  the  speculative  interpretation  of  Jesus  of  Nazar- 
eth— not  as  a  "particular  person  who  appeared  in  time  and  space 
relations,"  but  as  a  particular  man  who  lived  and  died  and  was 
buried  and  rose  again — the  excarnation  completing  the  process 
begun  in  the  incarnation.  Harnack  faults  the  Church  here  for 
corrupting  "the  apostolic  heritage  with  Greek  philosophy." 
But  if  Greek  philosophy  was  also  a  lesson  taught  by  the  same 
Divine  Pedagogue  that  taught  the  Jews  their  religion,  this  in- 
terpretation of  Christ  was  but  a  unification  of  knowledge. 
When  thought  comes  to  reflect  upon  the  phenomena  of  history ; 
when  it  becomes  a  philosophy  of  history — the  hig'hest  intellectual 
interpretation  of  time  and  space  phenomena — it  is  compelled 
to  deny  an  immanent  Logos  and  thus  commit  suicide,  or  to 
make  the  identification. 

Thus  we  find  Hegel,  the  very  incarnation  of  philosophy, 
making  the  same  identification  that  the  Church  has  done.^  The 
mere  personal  opinion  of  Hegel,  as  well  as  that  of  John  Stuart 
Mill,  is  of  no  worth.  It  is  only  a  question  of  speculative 
thought  and  of  its  interpretation  of  the  time  and  space  process, 
into  a  higher  form  of  knowledge  than  that  of  mere  sense  per- 
ception or  science.  If  religion  is  to  be  not  only  a  psychological 
experience,  but  is  to  receive  a  rational  interpretation  and  vali- 
dation, we  cannot  remain  on  the  plane  of  Neo-Kantian  agnosti- 
cism as  Sabatier  and  Harnack  do.  And  we  must  either  simply 
live  the  Christian  life,  and  abstain  from  any  attempt  at  intel- 
lectual justification  of  it,  or  we  must  transcend  the  agnosticism 
that  makes  any  such  justification  impossible.  Sabatier  and 
Harnack  have  done  neither. 

^Hegel's  Philosophy  of  History,  pp.  336-338. 


CHAPTER  III 


LOISY 


From  the  subjective,  non-historical  view  of  Christianity 
given  by  Sabatier  and  Harnack,  let  us  turn  to  the  objective 
view  presented  by  Abbe  Loisy,  in  his  two  volumes.^ 

The  first  book  of  this  erudite  French  theologian  has  been  as 
warmly  welcomed  by  many  liberal  Catholics  in  Europe,  as  ex- 
pressing their  own  view  of  the  Church  of  their  birth  and  their 
love,  as  it  has  been  reprobated  by  the  Roman  hierarchy.  It 
voices  the  views  of  the  Liberals,  who  are  accused  of  what  ultra- 
montanists  stigmatize  as  I'americanisme — an  accusation  that 
led  to  the  prohibition  of  Mivart's  views  and,  finally  to  his  ex- 
communication and  death.  L' americanisme  has  been  officially 
condemned,  but  it  is  a  vigorous  and  growing  school  of  thought 
in  the  Roman  Catholic  Church.  It  bids  fair  to  become  domi- 
nant in  the  future,  unless  Rome  has  forgotten  her  cunning  of 
flexibility  and  of  bowing  in  due  time,  to  the  inevitable. 

Loisy's  book  is  professedly  a  polemic  against  Protestantism 
as  represented — or  rather  misrepresented,  by  Sabatier  and 
Harnack. 

Primitive  Christianity  and  modern  Christianity  are  two  very 
different  things.  What  is  the  bond  of  identity  that  unites  them  ? 
That  is  the  common  problem  of  all  three  writers.  As  to  the 
facts  of  the  transformations  of  primitive  Christianity  by  histor- 
ical environments,  they  are  all  three  at  practical  agreement. 
As  to  the  interpretation  of  Christianity,  as  thus  transformed  by 
successive  environments,  they  are  at  sword's-point !  Loisy  hold- 

^  L'Evangile  et  L'Eglise,  Paris,  1902.  Autour  d'un  Petit  Livre, 
Paris,  1903. 

107 


io8  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

ing  it  to  have  been  a  legitimate  development,  the  others  a  de- 
generacy. Loisy  had  been,  since  1881,  Professor  of  Hebrew  in 
the  Institut  Catholique  in  Paris.  The  students  of  Saint- Sulpice 
were  forbidden  to  attend  his  lectures,  after  the  publication  of 
his  book  on  "Chaldean  Myths  of  the  Creation  and  the  Deluge." 
In  1893  he  was  deprived  of  his  chair  in  the  Institut  Catholique, 
and  appointed  chaplain  to  a  girl's  school.  His  health  broke 
down.  He  had  to  resign  his  chaplaincy  and  the  meagre  salary 
which  was  his  only  support.  It  was  during  this  time  that  he 
wrote,  under  the  name  of  Firmin,  the  articles,  of  which 
L'Evangile  et  L'Eglise  is  the  ripest  result.  He  had  been  for- 
bidden to  continue  these  in  articles  in  1900. 

Finally  he  was  appointed  to  a  chair  at  the  Ecole  des  Hautes 
Etudes,  where  he  enjoys  academical  freedom.  At  present  he  is 
said  to  be  the  recognized  head  of  an  important  school  of  Catholic 
thought,  which  is  making  headway  in  France,  Italy,  Austria, 
Belgium,  and  the  United  States. 

Like  Sabatier,  Loisy  finds  it  ''a  psychological  necessity  to 
bring  his  religious  consciousness  into  harmony  with  his  general 
culture."  With  Sabatier  religion  is  his  inner  religous  feeling, 
while  with  Loisy  it  is  religion  on  its  objective,  institutional  side. 
He  accepts,  like  Sabatier  and  Harnack,  the  general  results  of 
the  most  advanced  historical  and  Biblical  criticism.  Loisy  says 
that  he  has  chosen  Cardinal  Newman  for  his  guide.  He  takes 
up  again  Newman's  idea  of  the  development  of  Christianity,  in 
order  to  oppose  the  views  of  Sabatier  and  Harnack.  His  own 
work  lacks  the  personal  interest  and  the  special  pleading  form 
of  Newman's.  He  writes  as  an  historian,  not  as  Newman  did, 
with  the  soul  of  a  religous  devotee  and  a  scholastic  partisan. 
To  read  Newman's  book  to-day  is  a  task  of  drudgery,  enlivened 
only  by  the  humor  of  his  supposing  himself  to  have  the  judicial 
temper,  the  historical  sense  and  sound  logic.  But  he  is  quite 
devoid  of  both  the  historical  spirit  and  method,  that  are  so  evi- 
dent in  the  work  of  Loisy.  Newman  refers  to  De  Maistre  and 
Moeller  as  using  the  same  principle,  i.  e.,  "that  the  increase  and 


LOISY  109 

expansion  of  the  Christian  creed  and  ritual,  and  the  variations 
that  have  attended  the  process  in  the  case  of  individual  writers 
and  churches,  are  the  necessary  attendants  on  any  philosophy  or 
policy  which  takes  possession  of  the  intellect  and  heart,  and  has 
had  any  wide  or  extended  dominion ;  that,  from  the  nature  of 
the  human  mind,  time  is  necessary  for  the  full  comprehension 
and  perfection  of  great  ideas ;  and  that  the  highest  and  most 
wonderful  truths,  though  communicated  to  the  world  once  for 
all  by  inspired  teachers,  could  not  be  comprehended  all  at  once 
by  the  recipients,  but,  as  received  and  transmitted  by  minds  not 
inspired  and  through  media  which  were  human,  have  required 
only  the  longer  time  and  deeper  thought  for  their  full  elucida- 
tion.    This  may  be  called  the  Theory  of  Development."^ 

In  Chapter  I  Newman  lays  down  as  distinctive  tests  be- 
tween Development  and  Corruption: 

(i)  Preservation  of  Type  or  Idea. 

(2)  Continuity  of  Principles. 

(3)  Power  of  Assimilation. 

(4)  Early  Anticipation. 

(5)  Logical  Sequence. 

(6)  Preservative  Additions. 

(7)  Chronic  Continuance. 

Then  follows  the  application  of  these  tests  in  an  absolutely 
unhistorical  way — the  quoting  of  this  and  that  Father,  or 
Church  decree — i.  e.,  the  dogmatic  method  of  using  uncritically 
whatever  tradition  seems  good  to  illustrate  and  thus  prove  {sic) 
the  thesis  in  hand. 

Loisy's  first  book  is  professedly  a  polemical  criticism  of  the 
point  of  view  of  Harnack  and  Sabatier.  Against  their  con- 
stant contention  that  nearly  every  step  forward  in  the  history 
of  the  Church,  has  been  an  apostasy  from  the  pure  essence,  he 
maintains  that  these  steps  constitute,  for  the  historian,  the  mani- 
festation of  the  real  essence  of  Christianity. 

^  Essay  on  the  Development  of  Christian  Doctrine,  p.  27. 


no  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

It  is  needless  to  go  into  detail  as  to  the  historical  transfor- 
mation of  the  meagre  remnant  of  the  Gospel  history,  allowed 
to  be  genuine  by  all  three  of  these  writers.  Loisy  looks  on 
these  transformations  as  natural  and  necessary  developments, 
as  those  of  the  tree  from  the  seed  and  environment.  With 
Harnack  and  Sabatier,  the  favorite  metaphor  for  describing 
these  transformations,  is  that  of  a  stream  issuing  from  a  pure 
fountain,  being  discolored  and  polluted  by  the  soils  through 
which  it  flows,  and  by  the  uncongenial  waters  of  the  tributaries 
that  flow  into  it.  We  may  admit  that,  in  one  point  of  view,  the 
Christianity  of  men  has  always  been  profoundly  inferior  to  the 
personal  religion  of  Jesus.  This  praise  is  accorded  to  Jesus  by 
even  those  who  regard  him  as  purely  human,  and  deny  the 
whole  ecclesiastical  interpretation  of  the  Person  and  work  of 
the  Christ  as  Saviour  and  Redeemer  of  men.  Certainly  every 
form  of  Christianity  to-day,  differs  from  that  of  the  Gospels. 
And  each  one  must  either  justify  itself,  or  an  absolute  return 
be  made  to  the  most  primitive  form — an  historical  and  moral 
impossibility. 

As  to  the  facts  of  the  Gospel  story,  Loisy  allows  much  of 
our  Gospels  to  be  an  idealization  of  Jesus  and  his  words  and 
works,  produced  spontaneously  in  the  consciousness  of  his 
disciples.  An  atmosphere  of  faith  and  love  was  the  source  of 
the  idealized  Jesus  that  we  find  in  the  Gospels.  In  his  second 
book  he  refers  to  the  Old  Testament  miracles  which  he  says, 
"the  historian  can  only  recognize  as  memories,  idealized  by 
faith,"^  and  adds  that  a  like  historical  criticism  is  to  be  ap- 
plied to  the  New  Testament.^  Thus  he  leaves  as  few  shreds  of 
genuine  history  as  to  the  words  and  works  of  Jesus  as  do  the 
others.  His  destructive  criticism  of  the  Gospel  is  more  fully 
set  forth  in  his  view  of  the  unhistoricity  of  most  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel.  Thus  he  says  that  "the  narratives  of  St.  John  are  not 
a  history,  but  a  mystic  contemplation  of  the  Evangelist;  his 

^  Autour  d'un  Petit  Livre,  p.  41. 
*The  same,  p.  43. 


LOISY  m 

discourses  are  theological  meditations  upon  the  mystery  of 
salvation."^  Again,  "the  Fourth  Gospel  is  a  book  of  mystical 
theology  where  one  hears  the  voice,  not  of  the  historic  Christ, 
but  that  of  the  Christian  consciousness."^ 

His  difference  from  them  is  in  his  method  of  interpreting 
these  facts,  in  the  course  of  their  historical  effects.^ 

In  Chapter  II  of  his  first  book  we  find  his  most  important 
divergence  from  the  others,  as  to  the  idea  of  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven.  While  they  make  it  to  be  within  the  soul  of  the  disci- 
ple, he  lays  stress  on  the  assumption  of  the  Messianic  role  by 
Jesus.  He  thinks  that  Jesus  took  an  objective  view  of  this 
kingdom,  and  throws  doubt  on  the  authenticity  of  the  words 
"the  Kingdom  of  God  is  within  you,"  (St.  Luke,  xviii,  21),* 
allowing  that  at  best  "within"  (evros)  should  be  translated 
"amongst"  or  "in  the  midst,"  au  milieu,  in  which  he  is  correct. 
The  Gospel  is  subordinated  to  the  kingdom,  as  the  sphere  in 
which  it  is  to  grow.  Pardon,  peace  and  love  are  means  of 
entrance  into  this  objective  kingdom. 

But  he  protests  that  "the  historian  ought  to  resist  the  temp- 
tation to  modernize  the  idea  of  the  kingdom."^ 

The  historic  Jesus  was  a  Jew,  and  held  the  Jewish  concep- 
tion of  the  Messianic  kingdom,  though  gradually  purifying  it ; 
which  purification  he  continued  after  his  resurrection  and  as- 
cension (in  the  hearts  and  minds  of  his  disciples).  For  I  can- 
not find  that  Loisy  allows  more  to  the  resurrection  and  glorifi- 
cation of  Jesus,  than  an  act  of  faith  in  the  souls  of  his  bereaved 
disciples.®  He  practically  agrees  with  Harnack  in  distinguish- 
ing between  the  Easter  message  and  the  Easter  faith.    The 

^  Autour  d'un  Petit  Livre,  p.  93. 

'P.  130. 

'  Autour  d'un  Petit  Livre.  pp.  61-68. 

*  L'Evangile  et  L'Eglise,  p.  55. 

*  The  same,  p.  56. 

■  Cf.  L'Evangile  et  L'Eglise,  117-123. 


112  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

message  is,  an  empty  tomb,  "He  is  not  here,"  and  the  faith  is, 
''He  is  risen."  There  is  no  proof  of  the  corporal  resurrection 
of  Jesus  that  is  vaUd,  from  the  historical  point  of  view.  It  was 
in  the  atmosphere  of  faith  in  the  souls  of  the  disciples,  that  we 
must  seek  Easter  faith — "He  is  risen."  "I  believe  that  I  have 
demonstrated  that  the  resurrection  of  the  Saviour  is  not  a  fact 
of  history,  as  was  the  terrestrial  life  of  Christ."^  Again  he  de- 
nies that  the  Divinity  of  Christ  can  be  proved  from  the  Gospels. 
He  attributes  some  of  the  supposed  proof  texts  to  later  idealiza- 
tions of  his  disciples,  and  others  he  interprets  in  the  light  of 
Jesus'  messianic  role.  The  Jesus  of  history  lived  and  died  as 
Messiah.  He  rose  again  as  Lord,  Saviour,  Son  of  God,  Logos 
and  God — in  the  faith  of  .his  disciples  and  in  the  interpretation 
of  the  Church  during  the  first  four  centuries.  "The  question  in 
the  time  of  Jesus  was  not,  'Is  He  God,'  but  Ts  He  the  Mes- 
siah?' The  Divinity  of  Christ  is  a  dogma  which  has  grown  in 
the  Christian  consciousness,  but  which  was  not  expressly  formu- 
lated in  the  Gospels.  It  existed  solely  in  the  germ,  in  the  notion 
of  the  Messiah,  Son  of  God."^ 

Loisy  makes  much  of  the  atmosphere  of  faith  in  the  early 
community.  This  loving  faith  of  bereaved  disciples  made  of 
him  all  that  is  beyond  the  historical,  pious  Jew,  who  essayed  the 
role  of  the  Messiah.  The  risen  Jesus  was  an  object  of  faith 
(un  oh  jet  de  foi),  not  a  historical  phenomenon.^ 

The  narratives  of  the  infancy  of  Jesus,  including  that  of  the 
Virgin  birth,  cannot  be  regarded  as  historical  memories,  but 
only  as  memories,  transfigured  by  loving  disciples.*  In  fact 
everything  in  the  New  Testament  that  is  attributed  to  the  risen 
Jesus,  is  frankly  stated  to  spring  from  this  idealizing  faith  in 
the  hearts  of  the  disciples.  This  must  be,  he  maintains,  the 
point  of  view  of  the  historian.     But  going  beyond  this,  he  af- 

'  Atitour  d'un  Petit  Livre,  p.  169. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  117. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  227. 

*  L'Evangile  et  L'Eglise,  29-31. 


LOISY  113 

firms  the  legitimacy  of  this  ideaUzation  of  Jesus.  The  historian 
can  only  note  the  faith  of  the  early  community  and  its  develop- 
ments through  the  ages.  He  need  be  neither  an  apologist  or  an 
adversary.  The  whole  of  the  doctrine,  polity  and  cult  of  the 
Church,  is  the  expression  of  the  developing  interpretation  of 
the  historical  Jewish  Messiah.  The  object  of  this  faith  is  at  no 
stage  of  its  development,  for  the  historian,  a  factual  reality  (une 
realite  de  fait).  It  is  a  religious  interpretation  of  historical 
facts.^ 

The  resurrection  of  Jesus,  not  being  a  fact  for  the  historian, 
must  be  accepted  as  an  act  of  faith  on  the  part  of  the  primitive 
community  of  disciples.  The  same  living  faith  of  the  commu- 
nity goes  on  to  found  the  Church,  propound  doctrines,  and  es- 
tablish forms  of  worship  in  the  name  of  the  glorified  Christ. 
The  Church  speaks  the  mind  of  Christ.  The  Church  is  his  body 
— the  extension  of  the  incarnation  in  secular  conditions — it 
speaks  from  faith  and  to  faith. 

After  this  faith  had  raised  and  glorified  Jesus,  the  idealizing 
process  goes  on  in  a  necessary  and  legitimate  course  of  develop- 
ment. The  Church  continued  the  idealizing  process  as  to  the 
person  and  work  of  Christ  till  the  council  of  Nicea,  where  he 
became,  "Very  God  of  Very  God ;  begotten,  not  made ;  being  of 
one  substance  (  6/Aoovaiav  )  with  the  Father,"  which  is  a  tran- 
scendental explanation  of  an  historical  fact."^  But  this  was  the 
natural,  necessary  and  valid  development  of  the  Gospel  of  Jesus. 
Thus  Loisy  accepts  en  bloc  the  whole  authoritative  teaching  of 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church.  He  looks  upon  it  as  the  rational 
explication  and  development  of  the  primitive  Gospel,  adapted  to 
the  changing  times  and  needs  of  men.  Apparently  there  is  no 
sign  of  scepticism,  of  an  arriere  pensee,  in  any  of  his  writings 
that  would  lead  one  to  suppose  him  to  be  other  than  a  loyal,  and 
devoted  and  submissive  member  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church. 

^  L'Evangile  et  L'Eglise,  31-32. 
*  Autour  d'un  Petit  Livre,  148. 
8 


114  THE  FPIEEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

The  others,  while  taking  the  same  view  of  the  historical  facts  in 
all  their  development,  make  it  the  ground  for  protesting  against 
historical  Christianity,  Protestant  as  well  as  Roman  Catholic. 
They  will  have  only  the  personal  religion  of  the  Jewish  re- 
former, and,  for  the  individual,  only  the  subjective  experience 
of  "God  and  the  soul,  and  the  soul  and  its  God,  as  the  sole 
contents  of  the  Gospel." 

Loisy  is  just  as  frank,  when  he  comes  to  treat  of  the  histor- 
ical side  of  the  foundation  and  growth  of  the  Church.  Religion 
cannot  live  and  be  propagated  on  earth,  without  a  religious  or- 
ganization. The  Church  has  been  the  body  of  the  glorified 
Saviour.  He  treats  the  Church  as  the  development,  by  the 
Christian  community,  of  the  Messianic  consciousness  of  Jesus. 
He  expressly  denies  that  the  historical  Jesus  founded  and  or- 
ganized a  Church,  setting  aside  all  the  proof-texts  usually  cited 
from  the  New  Testament.  "The  institution  of  the  Church  by 
the  resurrected  Christ  is  not  a  tangible  fact  for  the  historian." 
Historically  it  started  with  "the  rupture  of  the  new  religion  with 
Judaism,"^  of  which  the  historical  Jesus  had  always  remained 
a  conforming  member.  "The  Church  was  not  only  the  inevit- 
able, but  the  legitimate  outcome  of  the  Gospel."^  "The  Church 
to-day  resembles  the  primitive  community,  but  only  as  an  adult 
man  resembles  a  new  born  babe."*  All  development  implies 
change.  It  is  not  in  the  cradle  one  seeks  for  the  actual  man, 
and  yet  there  is  an  identity  persisting  through  all  the  growth  of 
the  babe  into  manhood.  He  protests  against  the  view  of  the 
others  as  an  abstraction,  when  they  want  the  pure  essence — the 
kernel  without  the  husk,  the  soul  without  a  body. 

"The  intentions  of  the  Church  are,  for  the  believers,  the  in- 
tentions of  the  Immortal  Christ.  *  *  One  sees,  without  diffi- 
culty, that  the  Church  has  not  been  founded  nor  the  Sacraments 
instituted,  strictly  speaking,  except  by  the  glorified   Saviour. 

^  Autour  d'un  Petit  Livre,  171,  172. 

'Ibid.,  p.  xxvii. 

'L'Evangile  et  L'Eglise,  p.  160. 


LOISY  115 

It  follows  that  the  institution  of  the  Church  and  Sacraments  by 
Christ,  like  the  glorification  of  Jesus  itself,  is  an  object  of  faith, 
not  of  historical  demonstration."^ 

But  as  he  holds  that  "Christ  is  God  for  faith,"  though  the 
deification  of  Jesus  has  its  historical  process  of  three  centuries, 
so  he  holds  to  the  infallible  authority  of  the  Church  and  of  the 
Pope,  reached  through  centuries  of  Christian  life  and  thought. 
"What  has  been  acquired  has  been  acquired,"  though  the  end  is 
not  yet.  He  looks  forward  to  future  modifications  of  the 
Church's  doctrine  and  cult,  to  meet  the  needs  of  new  times  and 
new  thought.^ 

"Thus,  for  the  historian,  who  limits  himself  to  the  consid- 
eration of  observable  facts,  it  is  the  faith  in  Christ  that  has 
founded  the  Church ;  from  the  point  of  view  of  this  faith,  it  is 
Christ  himself,  living  for  the  faith,  and  accomplishing  for  it 
that  which  the  historian  sees  realized."* 

His  historical  treatment  of  the  growth  of  dogmas  differs 
little  from  that  of  Harnack.  Scarcely  any  of  the  accepted 
dogmas  are  to  be  found  in  the  New  Testament.  They  have 
been  made  by  the  mind  of  the  Church,  formulating  its  Chris- 
tian consciousness. 

As  an  historian  he  sees  the  influence  of  Greek  philosophy, 
Roman  law  and  other  changing  environments,  as  factors  of  this 
development  of  the  Church  and  her  dogmas  and  cult. 

That  which  interests  Protestants  most  is  his  last  chapter  on 
"The  Catholic  Cult"  and  the  chapter  in  his  second  book  on 
"The  Institution  of  the  (seven)  Sacraments." 

He  rightly  says  that  "History  knows  of  no  instance  of  a  re- 
ligion without  a  cult,  and  consequently  Christian  ritual  should 
cause  no  surprise.  But  one  easily  conceives  that  if  the  essence 
of  Christianity  is  such  as  M.  Harnack  has  defined,  such  a  pure 
Christianity  excludes   all   external    forms   of   worship.     That 

*  Autour  d'un  Petit  Livre,  p.  227. 

*  a. Autour  d'un  Petit  Livre,  pp.  155.    L'Evangile  et  L'Eglise,  p.  203. 
'Autour  d'un  Petit  Livre,  p.  172. 


Ii6  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

would  be  a  peculiar  religion,  designed  for  a  legion  of  angels, 
of  which  every  individual  constitutes  a  separate  species,  and  not 
for  men  destined  to  live  together  on  earth."^ 

Every  religion  is  sacramental.  Christianity  without'cult,  is 
at  best  a  mystic  philosophy,  like  Neo-Platonism.  The  historic 
Jesus  did  not  institute  these  forms  of  worship.  He  used  the 
Jewish  cult.  But  as  soon  as  Christianity  grew  to  be  a  separate 
religion,  it  had  need  of  a  new  cult  adapted  to  its  religious  ideas 
and  wants.  A  cult  was  necessary  to  its  life  and  propagation. 
To  be  propagated  in  other  nations,  it  was  necessary  for  it  to 
adopt  more  or  less  of  their  forms  of  worship.  Thus  the  cult 
grew  as  it  conformed  to  the  special  conditions  of  .nascent 
Christianity.  "Suppose  that  one  can  prove  the  pagan  origin  of 
a  number  of  Christian  rites,  these  rites  ceased  to  be  pagan  when 
they  were  accepted  and  interpreted  by  the  Church.  Suppose 
that  the  great  development  of  the  worship  of  the  saints,  of  relics, 
of  the  Virgin,  are  due  in  some  ways  to  a  pagan  influence,  it  is 
not  to  be  condemned  solely  on  account  of  this  origin."^  To  be 
a  universal  religion,  Christianity  must  needs  put  off  its  Jewish 
form  and  adapt  itself  to  the  language,  ideas  and  forms  of  other 
peoples.  Converted  Gentiles  not  only  obtained  a  dispensation 
from  the  Jewish  rite  of  circumcision,  but  they  also  were  able  to 
preserve  many  of  their  own  rites  on  condition  of  their  having  a 
Christian  interpretation  of  them.  Otherwise  Christianity  could 
never  have  converted  the  nations,^  Sacraments  are  naturally 
and  morally  necessary  means  of  grace  in  any  religion.  "They 
are  the  expression  of  the  inner  religion,  and  the  means  of  com- 
munication with  God.  The  meaning  of  sacramental  symbols  is 
determined  by  the  historical  circumstances  of  their  institution 
and  their  usage.  Their  efficacy  comes  from  their  being  means 
of  grace  as  words  are  means  of  expression  of  thought."*    They 

^L'Evangile  et  L'Eglise,  p.  121. 
'Ibid.,  p.  231. 
'Ibid.,  p.  233-5. 
•*Ibid.,  p.  260. 


LOISY  117 

symbolize  and  realize,  for  the  Christian,  the  perpetual  action  of 
Christ  in  the  Church."^  Loisy  also  advises  that  the  Catholic 
Church  modify  her  cult  somewhat,  to  meet  the  needs  of  the 
modern  world,  without  repudiating  the  transmitted  heritage  of 
the  Christian  past. 

Again,  we  note  his  contention  that  the  cult  was  gradually 
instituted  by  the  Church.  The  historical  Jesus  instituted  no 
sacraments.  "The  institution  of  Baptism  was  by  the  glorified 
Saviour,  that  is  to  say,  the  Gospel  itself  testifies  that  the  rite 
was  born  in  the  apostolic  community."^  So  as  to  the  Mass. 
The  Last  Supper,  as  recorded  in  the  Gospel,  was  a  Jewish  Mes- 
sianic feast,  but  it  became  the  germ  from  which  the  glorified 
Jesus,  through  his  disciples  and  their  converts,  finally  instituted 
the  Mass.  Thus  "only  the  pious  imagination  of  a  naive  faith 
could  picture  St.  Peter  saying  Mass  pontifically  the  day  after 
the  resurrection."' 

Thus  far  we  have  presented  chiefly  the  negative  side  of 
Loisy's  teaching,  finding  his  historical  criticism  of  a  developed 
Church  differing  but  little  from  that  of  Sabatier  and  Harnack. 
The  positive  side  of  his  teaching  is,  that  there  is  no  soul  on 
earth  without  a  body,  and  no  soul  and  body  that  are  not  in  a 
process  of  development.  Thus  he  would  answer  Harnack's 
question,  "What  is  Christianity,"  by  saying,  that  it  is  the  his- 
torical Church, — ^an  organism  of  soul  and  body,  developing 
through  the  ages.  So,  too,  he  would  answer  Sabatier  by  say- 
ing, that  there  never  has  been  a  "Religion  of  the  Spirit"  apart 
from  a  "Religion  of  Authority." 

"The  essence  of  Christianity"  or  "the  pure  Gospel"  has 
never  existed  as  an  abstraction,  apart  from  the  color  of  time 
and  place  and  environment  in  which  it  has  taken  form.  It  can 
never,  historically,  be  separated  from  the  Christian  community. 
It  was  born  and  has  lived  in  a  communal  organization.    As  the 

'  P.  278. 

'  Autour  d'un  Petit  Livre,  p.  229. 

'  Cf.  Autour  d'un  Petit  Livre,  pp.  237  -45. 


ii8  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

human  body  is  modified  by  what  it  takes  up  from  its  food  and 
environment,  so  has  the  Church  been  modified  by  its  environ- 
ment. The  influence  of  environment  in  producing  variations 
in  the  form,  color  and  habits  of  animals  is  now  one  of  the 
recognized  principles  of  biology.  Environment  is  the  source  of 
change,  and  change  of  development,  and  development  of  the  re- 
alization of  what  was  merely  potential  or  the  supposed  essence 
of  a  thing.  The  actuality  is  always  more  than  the  essence. 
Christianity  is  what  the  Gospel  has  become  on  earth  and  under 
temporal  conditions.     It  has  always  been  changing. 

Now  it  is  to  history  that  Loisy  looks  for  the  causes  of  these 
changes,  these  variations,  these  developments.  He  seeks  to  un- 
derstand a  dogma,  institution  or  cult,  by  learning  the  historical 
circumstances  through  which  it  has  become  what  it  is.  He 
seeks  to  preserve  the  body  which  preserves  the  soul ;  while  Sab- 
atier  and  Harnack  seek  to  preserve  the  soul  without  the  body  of 
Christianity,  for  with  them  the  creeds,  polity  and  cult  of  the 
Church  have  all  been  peeled  off  and  nothing  is  left  of  Christi- 
anity, but  a  filial  feeling  in  the  soul  of  the  believer  towards  its 
heavenly  Father ;  unmediated  by  rites  and  creeds  and  deeds  of 
the  Church. 

This  at  least  appears  on  the  surface,  to  be  the  interpreta- 
tion given  to  the  Gospel  and  the  Church  by  M.  Loisy.  But  a 
critical  reading  of  his  two  volumes  awakens  a  doubt  as  to  this 
larger  and  more  concrete  view.  One  finds  in  fact  two  discon- 
nected developments  with  no  organic  relation  between  them. 
There  is  the  same  historical  development  traced  in  almost  the 
identical  language  of  Harnack  and  Sabatier.  And  there  is  also 
the  development  of  the  faith,  the  inward  essence  of  the  re- 
ligion going  on  to  expand  its  interpretation  of  itself — a  super- 
historical  process.  Acts  of  faith  and  objects  of  faith,  idealiza- 
tions of  facts,  transcendental  facts,  are  here  the  materials  and 
the  potencies  that  give  us  an  extra-historical  development. 

The  causal  or  the  reciprocal  relation  between  the  two  is  not 
made  apparent.    The  soul  is  not  clearly  shown  as  active  in 


LOISY  iig 

adapting  the  environments  to  its  own  life,  nor  are  the  environ- 
ments looked  at  as  causal  of  the  soul — the  faith  of  the  Church. 
At  most  it  is  a  case  of  casual  parallelism,  based  upon  the  same  ag- 
nosticism— the  same  incompetency  of  knowledge  in  the  spiritual 
realm,  that  is  the  basis  of  both  Sabatier's  and  Harnack's  views. 
It  is  an  appeal  from  knowledge  to  faith.  The  only  advance  in 
rationality  made  by  Loisy,  is  making  the  appeal  to  communal 
faith  rather  than  to  that  of  the  individual.  This  is  truly  an  ad- 
vance. With  Harnack  it  is  ever  a  question  of  the  faith  of  the 
individual  soul  and  its  God,  unmediated  by  that  of  the  com- 
munal soul.  He  sets  aside  all  mediations  as  impertinent  ob- 
trusions between  the  soul  and  its  God,  and  retires  to  the  oracle 
within  for  private  audience  with  Him,  thus  dismissing  all  forms 
of  communal  authority  for  the  individual.  God  must  be  to 
each  individual  that  which  his  own  inner  oracle  gives.  The 
logical  result  is  that  "de  deis  non  disputandum  est." 

It  is  a  case  of  individual  anthropomorphization  of  subjective 
feeling  or  faith,  rather  than  a  communal  one.  Just  so  far  as 
the  social,  the  corporate  view  of  man  is  truer  than  the  abstract 
individual  view,^  so  far  is  Loisy's  view  truer  than  Harnack's. 

Let  Harnack  blot  out,  and  un-relate  himself  from  all  the  in- 
terpretations of  the  primitive  Christian  community ;  from  all 
the  creeds,  deeds  and  cult  of  the  Church ;  from  the  whole  of  the 
Christian  sentiment  and  culture  in  which  he  has  been  bathed 
from  his  earliest  years,  and  he  would  probably  find  the  oracle 
within  bespeaking  a  primitive  form  of  nature-worship,  and  him- 
self worshiping  a  stock  or  stone  or  sun  instead  of  a  heavenly 
Father.  Without  the  mediation,  the  authority  of  a  communal 
Christian  life  of  eighteen  centuries,  he  would  not  even  have  the 
lofty  human  ideal  of  a  Christ. 

So  far  then  as  Loisy  stands  for  a  Christianity  that  is  the  age- 
long self-interpretation  and  self -objectifying  of  a  communal 
consciousness  or  faith,  so  far  does  he  commend  his  view  as  giv- 
ing a  rational  authority  for  individual  faith  and  action. 
*Cf.  Chap.  I. 


120  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

But  a  deeper  doubt  rises,  which  applies  to  both  of  these  two 
views.  That  doubt  arises  from  the  agnostic  standpoint  of  all 
the  three  writers.     We  cannot  know  God. 

Then,  though  religion  be  a  psychological  necessity  and  a 
perennial  experience  of  the  individual  and  of  the  race,  there  can 
be  no  rational  validation  of  it.  To  take  the  matter  at  its  centre, 
we  have  only  psychological  experiences,  individual  or  com- 
munal. At  best  we  can  objectify  them.  We  can  turn  subjec- 
tive anthropology  into  objective  theology.  This  was  the  stand- 
point of  Ludwig  Feuerbach  in  his  book  of  the  same  title  as  Har- 
nack's,  das  Wesen  Christentums,  translated  by  Marian  Evans 
(George  Eliot)  under  the  title  Essence  of  Christianity.  Here 
all  objectivity  of  God  and  the  Christ  of  the  Church,  is  derived 
from  the  self -deification  of  man  and  humanity.  It  is  no  longer 
God  and  the  soul,  but  only  the  soul  and  its  experiences.  There 
is  no  longer  question  that  the  risen  and  glorified  Saviour  is  an 
act  of  finite  spirit.  The  Catholics,  he  says,  are  more  logical 
than  the  Protestants  since  they  objectify  and  deify  not  only  the 
love  of  the  human  father  and  son,  but  also  a  mother's  love.  God 
is  in  reality  only  a  self-g^ven  affirmative  answer  to  our  own 
wishes. 

Feuerbach  held  that  man  alone  is  divine.  How  then  does  he 
come  to  believe  in  and  worship  God  ?  That  is  an  illusion  formed 
from  the  wishes  of  the  heart  and  poetic  imagination.  The  Gods 
are  wish-beings  {Wunschwesen) — the  wishes  and  ideals  of  the 
human  heart  objectified  by  the  imagination.  Man  objectifies 
not  his  empirical  self,  but  his  self  as  he  wishes  it  to  be.  A 
miracle  is  an  imaginary  realization  of  a  supernatural  wish.' 
Christ  is  the  omnipotence  of  subjectivity,  the  objectification  of 
the  wishes  of  the  heart.  Here  we  find  a  most  thorough-going 
pragmatism  applied  to  the  explanation  of  objective  religion. 

Later,  Feuerbach  came  to  take  a  pessimistic  view  of  this 
objective  deification  of  man's  nature.  For  in  it,  man  gives 
away  to  God  what  is  really  his  own  highest  nature.  He 
thus  divests  himself  of  that  nature,  putting  it  into  an  im- 


LOISY  121 

aginary  God  or  Christ.  The  practical  direction  is,  that  man 
should  resume  what  he  has  wrongly  objectified  out  of  him- 
self, and  then  be  his  own  God  and  his  own  Saviour.  Thus,  he 
says,  the  truth  in  the  sacraments  is  that  eating  and  drinking 
and  the  bath  are  really  human  good  things.  Feuerbach  called 
himself  an  atheist,  and  explicitly  affirmed  that  his  views  were  in 
direct  opposition  to  those  of  Hegel,  so  that  it  is  wrong  to  place 
him  among  §ven  the  left-wing  Hegelians. 

We  need  not  stop  to  show  how  easily  and  logically  Har- 
nack's  view  runs  into  that  of  Feuerbach.  Here  we  raise  the 
question  whether  Loisy's  view  is  not  identical  with  it.  The  res- 
urrection and  ascension — ^the  whole  process  of  the  excarnation 
and  glorification  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth — was  a  subjective  one  in 
the  hearts  of  the  bereaved  band  of  disciples,  and  not  historical 
fact.  In  the  atmosphere  of  corporate  faith  and  love  there  was 
this  communal  act  of  faith,  that  gave  them  a  risen  and  glorified 
Jesus.  He  ever  remains  an  object  of  faith  {oh jet  de  foi),  rather 
than  of  knowledge.  And  so  the  whole  process  of  the  super- 
natural side  of  Christianity  goes  on  as  a  subjective  communal 
experience,  which  is  unconsciously  objectified. 

Loisy's  contention  is  that  the  mind  of  the  Church  is  the 
mind  of  Christ ;  that  what  the  community  thinks  and  does  and 
says  are  the  thoughts  and  deeds  and  sayings  of  the  glorified 
Christ.  So  his  whole  explication  of  the  Christ-element  can  be 
taken  as  an  objectification  of  the  subjective  faith  of  the  com- 
munity. There  is  not  a  phase  of  Church  teaching  as  set  forth  by 
Loisy,  that  cannot  be  consistently  explained  on  Feuerbach's 
view  of  the  objectifying  of  subjective  experiences.  An  hon- 
est God  is,  on  this  theory,  the  noblest  work  of  man,  so  a  glori- 
fied and  an  ever  present  teaching  and  saving  Jesus  is  the  noblest 
work,  the  creation  of  the  Church. 

Loisy's  apparent  sincerity  is  such  that  we  may  doubt  if  he 
consciously  takes  this  purely  subjective  view  of  Christ.  The 
Christ  of  the  Church  as  defined  in  the  Nicene  Creed  is  the 
Eternal  Son  of  the  Eternal  Father.    The  immanent  presence  of 


122  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

this  Eternal  Logos  in  the  Church  is  no  form  of  mere  finite  sub- 
jectivity, individual  or  corporate — that  is  the  view  of  historical 
Christianity.  Loisy  apparently  accepts  this  view  sincerely. 
And  yet  his  interpretation  of  its  development  out  of  the  sub- 
jective faith  of  the  community,  seems  to  deprive  it  of  any  true 
objectivity.  Any  agnostic  can  accept  this  interpretation  of  re- 
ligion as  an  idealistic  fiction,  which  makes  Christianity  to  be,  at 
best,  a  pious  fable. 

If  this  is  Loisy 's  view,  it  is  based  on  the  same  religious 
agnosticism  that  vitiates  the  work  of  Harnack  and  Sabatier. 
And  the  same  criticism  made  on  their  view  applies  to  Loisy's.^ 
Knowledge  of  objective  truth  and  reality  is  limited  to  that  of 
science  and  history,  but  is  denied  in  the  realm  of  religion.  And 
nescience  can  never  give  any  philosophy  of  religion  that  will 
validate  or  give  it  authority  in  any  of  its  forms,  even  the 
highest. 

Taking  this  view  of  Loisy's  exposition  of  The  Gospel  and 
the  Church,  we  can  readily  understand  and  appreciate  the  con- 
demnation passed  upon  it  by  the  authorities  in  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church. 

.  Loisy's  second  volume,^  written  after  the  condemnation,  is  a 
reply  to  his  critics  that  retracts  nothing,  but  rather  gives  more 
countenance  to  the  view  that  he  is  treating  Christianity  as  a 
fine,  pious  fable.  In  an  appendix,  he  gives  the  text  of  the  offi- 
cial condemnation  of  his  book,  placing  it  in  the  Index  Librorum 
Prohibitorum.  We  give  a  translation  of  the  text  of  a  part  of 
this  document,^ 

Thus  one  who  turns  to  Loisy,  from  Sabatier  and  Harnack, 
to  find  a  more  rational  and  objective  interpretation  of  Christi- 
anity, will  have  a  feeling  of  disappointment  arising  from  this 
doubt. 

Religion  cannot  thrive  on  a  known  fable,  however  pious  it 

*Cf.  Chap.  H. 

*  Autour  d'un  Petit  Livre 
'Cf.  Appendix,  note  V. 


LOISY  123 

may  be.  If  one  could  only  detect  the  sceptic's  smile  in  the 
honest  looks  of  the  author,  he  would  spend  no  time  in  reading 
his  books. 

Again,  if  this  is  Loisy's  view,  he  is  also  open  to  criticism  as 
to  the  development  of  the  subjective  communal  faith.  As  I 
have  said,  the  development  of  the  faith  and  the  historical  devel- 
opment do  not  seem  to  be  clearly  put  in  vital  relation.  It  is  a 
case  of  casual  parallelism  rather  than  of  organic  interaction. 
Faith  at  best  plays  the  part  of  a  hermit  crab,  not  growing  its 
own  shell,  but  taking  possession  of  the  cast-off  shell  of  a  mol- 
lusk,  only  quitting  it  for  another  when  he  has  outgrown  it.  It 
grew  large  enough  to  take  the  Roman  Empire  for  its  body  dur- 
ing the  Middle  Ages.  It  may  grow  large  enough  to  house 
itself  in  the  cast-off  shell  of  modern  democracy.  But  it  never 
makes  its  own  shell.  Thus  one  could  not  speak  of  its  historical 
transformations,  as  the  development  of,  the  Gospel. 

Again,  as  Loisy  resolutely  identifies  the  Gospel  with  the  ex- 
ternal organization — the  hermit  crab,  with  its  stolen  house — he 
could  be  faulted  with  just  the  opposite  of  Harnack's  error.  He 
validates  the  abstraction  of  the  opposite  side,  that  of  the  body, 
as  Harnack  does  that  of  the  spirit.  He  gives  us  the  brute 
actual,  as  Harnack  gives  us  the  invisible  essence;  identifying 
the  soul  with  the  body,  the  Gospel  with  the  Church. 

But  now,  giving  the  author  the  benefit  of  the  doubt,  let  us 
look  at  his  work  as  that  of  a  sincere  apologist  for  Christianity. 
Let  us  take  him  at  his  positive  word  in  one  passage,  as  believ- 
ing in  a  risen  and  ever  living  Christ. 

It  occurs  in  the  chapter^  in  which  he  discusses  the  question 
as  to  the  Church  having  been  instituted  by  Christ.  The  Mes- 
sianic kingdom  of  the  living  Jesus  was  an  historical  fact.  The 
Church  in  a  true  sense  continues  it.  But  "as  a  divine  insti- 
tution it  is  an  object  of  faith  (un  objet  de  foi)  not  a  fact  that 
is  historically  demonstrable,"  for  it  is  "founded  upon  the  di- 
vinity of  Christ,  which  is  not  an  historical  fact,  but  one  given 

*  Autour  d'un  Petit  Livre,  p.  169. 


124  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

by  faith,  of  which  the  Church  is  witness."  Dismissing  the 
words  "Thou  art  Peter  and  upon  this  rock  I  will  build  my 
Church,"  he  holds  rightly,  that  all  the  texts  which  concern  the 
mission  of  the  Apostles  and  the  real  institution  of  the  Church 
are  the  words  of  the  risen  and  glorified  Christ.*  "John  has 
united  into  one  tableau  the  instructions  of  the  Saviour  in 
Matthew  and  Luke,  and  the  Pentecostal  scene  of  the  Acts. 
That  appearance  of  Christ  to  his  apostles  is  what  founds  the 
faith  of  the  Church  and  the  Church  itself."  But  all  comes 
from  the  risen  Saviour.  The  glorified  Jesus  breathes  upon  the 
apostles  to  give  spiritual  life,  as  God  had  breathed  into  the  first 
man  to  give  him  natural  life.  Thenceforward  the  apostles  and 
their  successors  are  the  mouthpieces  of  the  glorified  Saviour. 
What  they  say  and  do  is,  for  faith,  what  the  glorified  Jesus 
says  and  does.  But  Loisy  returns  to  his  contention  that  the 
resurrection  and  glorification  of  Jesus  are  not,  properly  speak- 
ing, historical  facts,  facts  for  knowledge,  but  only  for  the  sub- 
jective faith  of  the  community.  Finally  he  says  :  "Thus,  then, 
for  the  historian,  who  limits  himself  to  observable  facts,  it  is 
the  faith  in  Christ  that  founded  the  Church ;  from  the  point  of 
view  of  faith  it  is  Christ  himself,  living  for  the  faith  and  accom- 
plishing through  it  (faith)  that  which  the  historian  sees  real- 
ized."^ Here  he  professedly  puts  himself  at  the  point  of  view 
of  faith.  He  believes  with  the  disciples  and  the  Church  of 
the  ages,  that  Jesus  did  rise  from  the  dead  and  ever  liveth.  He 
has  the  same  faith  in  the  reality  of  the  glorified  Saviour  that 
Sabatier  and  Harnack  have  in  God  the  Father.  In  the  preface^ 
to  this  second  volume,  he  expressly  says  that  he  has  not  de- 
nied that  Jesus  was  raised  from  the  dead,  but  only  that  the  fact 
is,  rigorously  speaking,  demonstrable  as  an  historical  fact. 
Taking  him  at  his  word  here  that  he  believes  in  a  risen,  glori- 

» Matthew,  XXVHI,  18-20;  Luke,  XXIV,  46-49;  Acts,  I,  6-8;  John, 
XX,  21-23;  Mark,  XVI,  15-16. 
'  Autour  d'un  Petit  Livre,  p.  172. 
*  P.  viiL 


LOISY  125 

fied,  ever-living,  ever-working,  a  transcendent  and  yet  an  im- 
manent Logos  in  the  Church — something  more  than  a  mere 
objectified  faith  of  the  community — we  can  accept  his  whole 
exposition  as  more  objective  and  rational  than  that  of  Har- 
nack's  subjective  Essence  of  Christianity.  "In  me  lives  one 
greater  than  me,"  said  Sabatier.  That  is  the  only  recognition 
of  objectivity  that  we  find  in  the  view  of  Sabatier  and  Har- 
nack.  And  it  is  always  open  to  the  doubter  to  ask  what  cer- 
tifies to  this  "one  greater  than  me,"  being  aught  else  than  me  at 
the  highest. 

Take  also  the  following  quotation  from  Loisy:  "From  the 
circumstance  that  Jesus  entered  into  history,  it  by  no  means 
follows  that  He  does  not  still  dominate  it;  from  the  fact  that 
He  lived  our  life  and  spoke  as  a  man,  it  does  not  follow  that  He 
was  not  God."  As  to  the  Church's  theory  of  The  Person  and 
Work  of  Christ,  "the  Catholic  critic  admits  the  truth  of  this 
interpretation,  as  he  does  that  of  every  other  dogma,  accepting 
its  formula  as  the  authorized  faith  which,  born  of  the  word 
of  Christ  and  of  the  Gospel  fact,  gradually  grew  more  and 
more  precise  in  the  consciousness  of  Christendom."  "The  his- 
torical Christ,  in  the  humility  of  his  service  is  sublime  enough 
to  justify  the  Christology  of  the  Church.  Its  definitions  are  the 
best  for  faith  that  could  have  been  formulated.  .  .  .  The  senti- 
ment which  Jesus  had  of  his  union  with  God  is  above  all  defini- 
tion. It  is  enough  to  say  that  the  way  in  which  he  embodied  it, 
is,  so  far  as  one  can  grasp,  equivalent  in  substance  to  the  ec- 
clesiastical definition."  "The  Gospel  idea  of  the  Messiah  con- 
tains the  principle  of  the  entire  Christological  development.  It 
implies  the  eternal  predestination  of  the  one  who  should  appear 
in  this  world  as  the  Son  of  God,  and  his  final  exaltation."  "Vul- 
gar rationalism  with  its  purely  transcendent  God  and  its  purely 
human  Christ  is  a  paltry  heresy.  .  .  .  The  acquired  attainments 
are  sure.     Christ  is  God  for  faith."^    "The  integral  formula  of 

*  Cf.  Autour  d'un  Petit  Livre,  133-iSS. 


ia6  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY      • 

Christianity  is  Christ  in  the  Church  and  God  in  Christ."^  "The 
vocation  of  Christ  is  not  that  of  a  prophet.  It  is  unique  in  its 
kind."2 

Putting  all  three  writers  on  the  plane  of  earnest  and  sincere 
faith,  and  on  the  basis  of  a  religious  agnosticism,  we  find  Loisy 
to  be  more  objective  and  more  Christian  than  Harnack  and  Sa- 
batier.  He  is  more  objective  because  he  gives  us  the  corporate, 
communal  faith  rather  than  that  of  the  private  individual.  In 
the  Church  lives  one  greater  than  the  Church,  rather  than  "in 
me  lives  a  greater  than  me." 

So,  too,  he  is  more  Christian  than  they  are,  because  with 
them  "the  greater  than  me"  is  God,  symbolized  as  Father  and 
not  an  ever-living  and  ever-present  Christ.  For  them  the  medi- 
ation of  Christ  is  confined  to  the  influence  of  the  Jesus  of  mem- 
ory— the  memory  of  an  historical  person  who  lived  and  died 
some  nineteen  centuries  ago.  As  they  hold  that  the  resurrec- 
tion of  Jesus  belongs  not  to  the  history  of  Jesus,  but  to  that  of 
the  apostles,  so  they  hold  that  even  if  he  is  immortal,  it  is  in  no 
other  way  than  other  great  souls  are  immortal,  and  that  his 
present  influence  upon  men  diflFers  not  in  kind  from  the  influ- 
ence of  departed  friends  and  great  men.  It  should  be  thor- 
oughly understood  that,  with  them,  all  reference  to  a  present 
Jesus,  in  public  or  private  worship  is  merely  symbolical ;  that  at 
most  we  can  have  memorial  exercises  which  will  help  to  call  up 
the  image  of  the  work  and  worth  of  the  departed,  so  that  we 
may  have  a  felt  presence.  Jesus  "was  crucified  dead  and 
buried,  he  descended  into  hell" — or  in  the  alternate  language  of 
the  rubric  before  the  Apostles'  Creed — "he  went  into  the  place 
of  departed  spirits."  That  is  the  close  of  their  Apostles'  Creed. 
Where  and  in  what  manner  of  existence  other  departed  spirits 
are,  is  the  most  we  can  say  of  the  dead  and  buried  historical 
Jesus  of  Nazareth. 

Loisy  continues  the  corporate  faith  of  the  Church  to  the  end 

^  L'Evangile  et  L'Eglise,  xxxiv. 
*  Autour  d'un  Petit  Livre,  134 


LOISY  127 

of  the  creed.  For  the  faith  of  the  early  community,  for  the 
faith  of  the  historical  Church,  Jesus  rose  from  the  dead.  That, 
for  the  Church,  is  a  fact  in  the  life  of  Jesus.  However  Loisy 
may  decline  to  consider  it  a  demonstrable  historical  fact,  he 
accepts  it  as  a  bona  Ude  experience  of  the  disciples,  and  a  con- 
tinued experience  of  the  Church — realizing  Jesus  and  the 
power  of  his  resurrection. 

For  Loisy,  the  mediation  of  Jesus  is  a  perpetual  one.  In  the 
Church  lives,  as  its  animating,  guiding,  helping  spirit  a  greater 
than  itself  —  the  glorified  Saviour,  the  Eternal  Logos.  The 
Church  is  his  body — oftentimes  his  body  of  humiliation.  He 
humbles  Himself  to  the  limitations  of  human  nature,  in  time 
and  space  and  historical  conditions.  His  work  in  the  exten- 
sion of  the  incarnation  in  the  Church  militant  is  in  the  process 
of  perfection  into  the  Church  triumphant — just  as  the  historical 
Jesus  "increased  in  wisdom  and  stature  and  in  favor  with  God 
and  man."^ 

No  phase  of  historical  Christianity,  or  of  its  fruitful  sects, 
have  been  existent  and  fruitful  apart  from  the  energizing  of  the 
immanent  Logos.  Much  less  has  the  whole  of  historical  Chris- 
tianity— its  developed  form  of  creed  and  deed  and  cult — ^been 
alogical.     God  has  been  in  Christian  history. 

The  Church  has  never  been  perfect,  as  perfction  cannot  be 
a  mark  of  any  process.  So  there  can  be  no  claim  made  for  the 
absolute  infallibility  of  any  form  or  phase  of  historical  Chris- 
tianity. And  Loisy  does  not  hold  a  brief  for  any  such  an  in- 
fallible authority.  He  looks  for  further  transformations  of 
the  Church  in  doctrine  and  cult;  taking  up  the  new  learning 
and  adapting  itself  to  the  needs  of  new  times. 

Speaking  of  the  present  religious  crisis,  resulting  from  the 
new  learning  or  modern  culture,  he  says : 

"The  best  means  to  remedy  the  trouble  does  not  seem  to  be 
the  suppression  of  all  ecclesiastical  organization,  all  orthodoxy 
and  traditional  ritual.     That  would  be  a  casting  of  Christianity 

'  St.  Luke,  II,  52. 


128  .  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

out  of  life  and  out  of  humanity.  The  rather  one  should  start 
from  what  is,  in  view  of  what  ought  to  be,  repudiating  nothing 
of  the  heritage  transmitted  to  our  age  by  the  Christian  cen- 
turies ;  but  appreciating  the  necessity  and  usefulness  of  the  im- 
mense development  which  has  been  accomplished  in  the  Church. 
It  is  to  gather  the  fruits  of  this  work  and  continue  it,  since  the 
adaptation  of  the  Gospel  to  the  changing  conditions  of  hu- 
manity is  as  pressing  a  need  to-day  as  it  has  always  been  and 
ever  will  be."^ 

Again:  "It  is  worthy  of  notice,  that  old  as  the  Church  is 
....  she  regards  herself  as  a  provisional  institution,  a  transi- 
tional organization."^  Again,  as  to  the  authority  of  the  Church 
he  says :  "It  is  not  true  that  ecclesiastical  authority  has  ever 
been  a  sort  of  external  constraint  to  repress  all  personal  activity 
of  conscience.  The  Church  is  an  educator  rather  than  a  domi- 
nating mistress."^  He  contends  that  Romanism  aims  as  much 
as  Protestantism,  at  the  formation  of  religious  personalities, 
souls  masters  of  themselves  with  pure  and  free  consciences, 
though  he  grants  the  danger  of  the  Roman  tendency  towards 
the  effacement  of  the  individual.  "The  Gospel  of  Jesus,"  he 
says,  "was  neither  wholly  individualistic  in  the  Protestant  sense, 
nor  wholly  ecclesiastical  in  the  Catholic  sense."  "The  Church 
ever  employs  activity  and  intelligence  in  modifying  her  forms. 
She  has,  as  individualistic  theologians  do  not,  a  sense  of  the 
collective  and  continuous  character  of  Christianity."  Again, 
as  to  dogma,  it  is  impossible  for  intelligent  Christians  to  believe 
anything,  without  going  on  to  state  it  in  intellectual  forms. 

Then  there  must  be  a  teacher.  The  distinction  between 
teachers  and  pupils  is  inevitable.  The  Church  is  a  teacher  and 
how  shall  she  teach,  if  she  have  nothing  definite  to  teach  ?  "A 
permanent  society,  a  Church  alone  can  maintain  the  equilibri- 
um between  the  heritage  and  the  new  acquisitions  of  truth. 

^  L'Evangile  et  L'Eglise,  p.  278. 

•P.  157. 
•P.  166. 


LOISY  129 

Hence  the  incessant  toil  of  the  human  reason  to  adapt  ancient 
truth  to  the  new  stages  of  thought  and  knowledge.  It  is  incon- 
ceivable that  each  individual  should  recommence  afresh  the 
past,  and  reconstruct,  for  his  own  use,  the  whole  religion.^ 
Here,  as  elsewhere,  each  is  aided  by  all  and  all  by  each."  "The 
Church  does  not  demand  belief  in  its  formulas  as  the  adequate 
expression  of  absolute  truth,  but  presents  them  as  the  least  im- 
perfect expression  that  is  morally  possible.  She  demands  that 
they  be  respected  for  their  value,  that  we  seek  the  truth  con- 
tained in  them  and  use  them  to  transmit  the  truth."^ 

In  every  phase  of  Christianity,  the  Church  is  as  necessary  to 
the  Gospel  as  the  Gospel  is  to  the  Church.  Looking  at  its  his- 
tory, his  contention  that  the  Church  has  preserved  the  Gospel 
seems  true.  Look  at  the  dark  ages  and  the  middle  ages.  Yes, 
and  we  may  hereafter  look  back  to  the  present  age  for  illus- 
tration. The  Church  has  no  other  raison  d'etre  than  the  pre- 
servation and  propagation  of  the  Gospel  in  the  world.  "The 
hierarchy  exists  for  the  sake  of  the  faithful.  The  Church  does 
not  exist  for  the  service  of  the  Pope,  but  the  Pope  exists  for  the 
service  of  the  Church."  "Christ  did  not  choose  a  cross  for 
himself  and  reserve  a  throne  for  his  vicar."^  The  authority 
of  the  Church  is  the  needed  preservative  of  this  institution  of 
service,  as  it  is  of  any  human  institution.  And  it  is  true,  as 
he  says,  that  "Protestantism  itself  exists  as  a  religion,  by  means 
of  that  amount  of  ecclesiastical  organization,  official  doctrine 
and  confessional  worship  that  it  has  retained."*  It  is  as  "a 
religion  of  authority,"  as  Sabatier  stigmatizes  Protestantism 
up  to  date,  that  it  has  won  its  mighty  moral  and  spiritual  results 
in  the  modern  world.  And  surely  any  student  of  history  may 
rightly  predict,  that  when  it  ceases  to  be  such,  and  becomes 
"the  religion  of  the  spirit;"  the  religion  of  merely  subjective 

"^  L'Evangile  et  L'Eglise,  p.  216. 
»  P.  218. 

'  Autour  d'un  Petit  Livre,  p.  178. 
*  L'Evangile  et  L'Eglise,  p.  277. 
9 


130  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

individualism,  its  days  of  power  and  usefulness  will  be  gone. 
In  his  second  volume,  Loisy  discusses  very  frankly  the  function 
of  the  Pope.  Quoting  our  Saviour's  words  to  his  disciples 
at  strife  as  to  who  of  them  should  be  accounted  greatest,^  he 
goes  on  to  insist  that  the  raison  d'etre  of  the  hierarchy  is  that 
of  service  to  the  people.^  When  people  come  to  think  that 
public  servants  act  as  if  the  people  were  made  to  be  their  serv- 
ants and  ministers,  then  the  people  will  see  no  reason  of  hav- 
ing public  servants  who  prey  upon  them  as  public  lords.  The 
directing  elite  of  any  society  must  be  in  the  service  of  the 
masses.  That  is  their  function.  Thence  is  their  authority. 
Ecclesiastical  authority  is  necessary  to  the  preservation  and  the 
propagation  of  the  Gospel  itself.  When  it  ceases  to  do  this,  it 
ceases  to  have  a  reason  for  existence.  The  extreme  form  of 
ecclesiastical  authority  was  historically  necessary  in  past  ages — 
necessary  in  the  last  few  centuries  also  against  the  theological 
anarchy  and  crumbling  individualism  of  Protestant  Christianity. 
But  it  has  its  dangers — the  oppression  of  individuals,  the  being 
an  obstacle  to  the  scientific  movement,  and  to  all  the  forms  of 
free  activity,  which  is  the  chief  agent  of  human  progress.  The 
present  revindication  of  the  individual,  is  a  reaction  against  the 
perversion  of  authority.  It  is  a  movement  to  preserve  the  dig- 
nity and  the  responsibility  of  the  individual,  the  family,  and  the 
state  against  being  made  the  tools  of  a  hierarchy  which  rules 
for  its  own  profit,  rather  than  serving  the  welfare  of  its  clients. 
The  critical  question  in  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  now  is, 
whether  the  hierarchy  can  adapt  itself  to  the  service  of  mod- 
ern needs.  Loisy  is  hopeful.  He  expresses  his  contempt  for 
the  cry  of  the  Ultramontanists,  "shun  the  error  of  I'ameri- 
canisme." 

The  rightful  authority  of  the  Church  has  been  vindicated 
by  nineteen  centuries  of  Christian  history.  The  abuses  of  its 
function  are  now  to  be  corrected — ^means  are  to  be  found  for  its 

'  St.  Luke,  XXII,  24-27. 
^ Ibid.,  lyg. 


LOISY  131 

beneficent  exercise  to-day,  as  in  past  ages.  The  pupils  whom  the 
Church  is  to  educate,  are  not  in  the  same  class  as  those  in  less 
enlightened  ages.  The  course  of  instruction  and  the  authority 
of  the  pedagogue  must  change  to  suit  the  needs  of  the  present. 
Authority  can  never  pass  from  the  Church  as  an  educator,  but 
it  can  adapt  itself,  as  it  always  has  done,  to  the  needs  of  the 
times.  Referring  to  the  indefatigable  labors  of  the  present 
Pope,  he  says,  "in  writing  that  the  Pope  exists  for  the  service 
of  the  Church  I  am  thinking  of  Leo  XIIL,  and  I  would  say  that 
his  service  has  been  glorious  and  good."^  This  he  writes  as  a 
loyal  Catholic,  after  the  condemnation  of  his  previous  book. 

Here  the  way  is  open  for  a  philosophy  of  Christianity  that  is 
not  pessimistic.  Here  the  way  is  open  to  real  objectivity, 
though  it  be  but  in  and  through  a  process,  and  the  end  is  not 
yet.  Here  we  have  no  crab-cry,  back  to  the  primitive,  the  un- 
developed, but  the  forward-cry  to  the  more  perfect,  till  we  all 
together,  corporately,  come  unto  the  stature  of  the  fullness  of 
Christ  glorified.  Here  we  have  objectivity  and  authority — 
not  of  the  brute  actual,  but  of  the  Logos  in  the  brute  actual, 
and  that  of  not  a  merely  immanent  Logos.  For  any  finite  actu- 
ality— bulk  it  large  as  humanity  itself — any  merely  immanent 
Logos,  in  any  form  of  mere  actuality  cannot  be  a  sufficient 
First  Principle,  leading  forward  beyond  any  mere  status  quo, 
and  onward  to  the  final  consummation  of  the  whole  process  of 
the  Church  militant  into  the  Church  triumphant.  Any  status 
quo  of  a  developing  process  of  a  temporal  actuality,  must  have 
the  authority  of  a  developed  stage  only,  and  never  that  of  an  ab- 
solutely infallible  authority.  Loisy  makes  no  such  claim  for 
any  stage  of  any  of  the  Creed,  polity  or  cult  of  even  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church.  But  he  makes  the  claim  for  authority  that 
every  human  organization  makes,  as  sustaining  and  educating 
and  developing  itself  as  a  minister  of  good.  The  actual  at  any 
time — the  body  which  the  soul  assumes — is  the  rational  done 
into  humanity  up  to  date,  by  the  eternal  Logos,  which  is  able  to 

^Autour  d'un  Petit  Livre,  178-186. 


132  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

order  "the  unruly  wills  and  affections  of  sinful  men"  into  more 
conformity  to  itself.  It  forbids  both  the  re-affirmation  and  the 
denial  of  the  ideals,  deeds  and  faith  of  its  past,  through  which 
it  has  attained  its  present.  Only  the  institution  that  honors  its 
parent  can  dwell  long  in  the  land — the  promise  annexed  to  the 
Fifth  Commandment.  It  is  this  authoritative  element  that  pre- 
serves any  institution.  At  the  same  time  is  forbids  any  uncrit- 
ical acceptance  of  previous  forms  of  life,  as  well  as  any  glorifi- 
cation of  any  mere  status  quo  of  the  institution.  Successive 
forms  are  posited  and,  in  time,  transcended,  but  the  identity 
persists  in  the  differences. 

The  eternal  Logos — the  ever  really  present  Christ  in  the 
Church — that  is  "the  esence  of  Christianity."  That  is  the  in- 
terpretation of  Christianity  that  historical  Protestantism  as  well 
as  Romanism  has  ever  maintained.  The  Logos  is  not  a  merely 
human,  or  a  merely  subjective  idea,  but  an  absolute  Logos,  law, 
order,  form,  reason,  self-realizing  itself  in  temporal  forms. 
This  realization  has  been  through  institutional  forms  as  edu- 
cative of  individuals.  It  has  ever  been  corporate.  And  the 
corporate  form  has  ever  been  authoritative  and,  only  as  such, 
educative  of  the  individual.  The  Church,  as  the  institutional 
form  of  the  religious  side  of  the  Logos,  is  thus  the  objective 
ratoinal  authority  of  reason  for  all  its  members,  in  which  they 
find  their  freedom.  To  be  a  good  Churchman  is  thus  essential 
to  being  a  good  Christian.  From  the  cradle  to  the  grave,  the 
Church  appeals  to  its  members  with  the  voice  of  paternal  au- 
thority. It  asks  for  no  other  than  filial  response,  and  the  re- 
cognition of  its  past,  present  and  promised  beneficence  in  edu- 
cating them  into  the  freedom  of  the  Sons  of  God,  "whose 
service  is  perfect  freedom."  This  is  the  form  of  authority 
that  the  Church  assumes — the  fact  of  its  being  the  adequate 
ethical,  as  it  has  ever  been  the  historical,  medium  of  the  Chris- 
tian life. 

Harnack  and  Sabatier  pose  as  the  foremost  representatives 


LOISY  133 

of  Protestantism.  Speaking  historically  and  objectively,  they 
are  nothing  of  the  sort.^ 

Professor  Harnack  is  apprehensive  for  the  future  of  Prot- 
estantism. But  this  is  not  because  of  the  decline  of  theology  or 
because  of  the  growth  of  the  so-called  liberal  movement  of  which 
he  is  a  representative.  The  following  are  the  danger  signals 
that  alarm  him.^  They  are  signals  "of  the  progressive  Catholi- 
cizing (Romanizing)  of  the  Protestant  Churches"  in  Germany. 

In  this  little  volume  he  says  of  the  Protestant  churches  of 
Germany  that  "(i)  They  are  coming  to  look  upon  the  visible 
Church  as  identical  with  the  true  Church  invisible,  having  au- 
thority to  be  respected.  They  have  come  to  speak  too  much  of 
the  Church,  and  of  the  what  the  Church  says  and  demands. 
The  Catholicizing  (Romanising)  of  the  conception  of  the 
Church  is  the  most  powerful  of  the  radical  transformations 
which  Protestantism  is  undergoing  in  the  nineteenth  century. 

(2)  They  are  promoting  the  authority  of  the  creeds,  as 
distinguished  from  systems  of  doctrinal  theology. 

(3)  They  are  attempting  "to  produce  complete  uniformity 
in  the  services  of  the  Church.  .  ,  .  They  are  already  in  the 
midst  of  a  liturgical  Catholicizing  movement." 

(4)  They  are  exalting  the  Sacraments  and  magnifying  the 
clergy. 

(5)  There  was  a  time  when  Protestantism  was  a  Church 
of  preaching,  and  a  school  of  catechizing  and  nothing  more. 
But  now  alas !  we  have  a  very  complex  lot  of  activities  carried 
on  by  the  Church.  We  have  deacons  and  deaconesses,  city  mis- 
sionaries, Sunday  school  teachers  of  both  sexes,  and  other  most 
varied  and  graduated  organs  of  the  Church's  life  and  activity. 
Religious  meetings  have  taken  manifold  forms.  Religion  is 
forcing  its  way  into  all  the  professional  walks  of  mankind,  into 
all  corporations,  and  there  setting  up  Christian  fellowship  and 

^  Cf.  Chap.  I  of  this  volume. 

^Thoughts  on  Protestantism.     Adolf  Harnack.     1899 


134  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

a  footing  of  Christian  morality.  The  Churches  are  paying  at- 
tention to  that  multitude  of  topics  which  we  call  the  "Social 
Question."  "In  all  these  factors  taken  together,  we  have  what 
may  be  described  as  the  Catholicizing  of  Protestantism." 

Professor  Harnack  first  criticises  the  older  Protestantism 
for  not  having  to  do  entirely  with  the  simple  Gospel.  He  then 
criticizes  the  present  Protestant  Churches  for  having  departed 
so  far  from  early  Protestantism.  Finally  as  he  says,  "the  critical 
form  of  Protestantism  is  going.  ...  is  to  have  a  clear  insight 
into  conditions  in  which  the  Protestant  life  is  on  the  point  of 
disappearing."  These  conditions  are  the  ones  which  he  has 
given  as  signs  of  the  Catholicizing  of  the  Protestant  Churches. 
This  movement,  he  adds,  is  fascinating  and  tempting,  "But  it 
is  temptation;  for  it  is  the  last  of  Protestantism,  of  the  Gospel 
and  of  the  truth." 

But  he  still  sees  some  ground  for  hope.  It  lies  in  the  lines 
of  a  non-authoritative,  individualistic  sort  of  association  of 
those  who,  like  himself,  form  the  ecclesiola  in  ecclesia.  He  lays 
"a  wreath  of  profound  gratitude  on  the  tomb  of  Albrecht 
Ritschl"  and  looks  to  the  new  leaders  to  save  the  Protestant 
Churches  from  going  over  to  a  sham  Catholicism. 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  the  Protestant  Churches  of  Ger- 
many have  as  utterly  disowned  his  interpretation  of  Protestant- 
ism, as  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  has  repudiated  Loisy's  in- 
terpretation of  Romanism.  The  lecture  that  forms  the  contents 
of  his  little  book.  Thoughts  on  Protestanism,  was  characterized 
in  a  German  paper  as  "a  radical  repudiation  of  Christianity, 
and  of  the  Christian  belief  founded  on  the  historical  fact  of  the 
revelation  of  God  in  Christ." 

Loisy  writes  as  a  Roman  Catholic.  That  is  an  accident  of 
birth  and  education.  Granting  that  he  is  as  sincere  as  Sabatier 
and  Harnack,  and  making  allowance  for  this  accident  of  ec- 
clesiastical home,  we  must  grant  that  he  takes  a  much  more 
objective  and  historical  and,  therefore,  more  rational  view  of 


LOISY  135 

Christianity  than  Sabatier,  Martineau,  Harnack,  and  the  whole 
school  of  Ritschlians. 

If  we  object,  as  object  we  do,  to  his  Romanistic  prejudices, 
we  can  find  the  same  view  under  the  prejudices  of  the  Anglican 
Church,  in  the  notable  volume  of  eleven  High  Anglicans  pub- 
lished fifteen  years  ago,  entitled  Lux  Mundi}  This  volume 
will  well  bear  re-reading  in  connection  with  that  of  Loisy. 

We  may  accept  the  interpretation  which  both  the  Roman- 
and  the  Anglo-Catholic  give  of  institutional  Christianity — ac- 
cept their  philosophical  interpretation  of  the  continuous  re-in- 
carnation of  the  transcendent  Logos  in  corporate,  institutional 
religious  form.  It  is  a  philosophy  which  belongs  to  no  one,  be- 
cause it  belongs  to  every  form  of  the  Church,  and  also  to  every 
form  of  man's  institutional  life.  We  may  object,  as  object  we 
do,  to  the  restricted  view  of  the  Anglo-Catholic  writers.  They 
take  too  insular,  or  better,  too  peninsular,  a  view  to  be  quite 
Catholic.  They  do  not  construct  a  map  of  a  sufficiently  large 
and  variegated  form,  in  defining  the  bounds  of  the  Church. 
They  fail  to  recognize  that  outside  of  the  Episcopal  Churches, 
there  are  also  other  vital  and  fruitful  branches  of  the  vine. 
"Hinter  dem  Berge  sind  auch  Leute."  Historical  Protestant- 
ism is  looked  at  too  much  as  an  apostasy.  And  yet  a  very  large 
part  of  the  rich,  fruitful  Christian  life  of  modern  Europe  and 
America,  is  outside  of  what  both  the  Romanist  and  these  Anglo- 
Catholic  writers  call  the  Church.  A  narrow,  arrogant  and  for- 
mal Anglo-Catholicism  cannot  give  an  adequate  interpretation 
of  historical  Christianity.  But  we  may  neglect  the  limitations 
of  all  these  writers  and  yet  welcome  their  interpretation  of  parts 
of  Christianity,  and  apply  it  to  the  whole.  Every  form  of 
Christianity  that  is  valid  for  the  extension  of  the  incarnation  in 
humanity,  is  an  extension  of  the  Church.  Every  branch  that  is 
a  fruitful  branch,  is  a  branch  of  the  true  vine.  Every  fold 
{avX'q)  of  Christians  belong  to  the  one  flock  (ttoi/avi;)  of  the  one 

^  Cf.  Sterrett's  Reason  and  Authority  in  Religion,  Part  II. 


136  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

Shepherd.^  Each  and  all  they  are  forms  of  "the  religion  of  the 
spirit"  because  they  are  "religions  of  authority."  "For  where 
two  or  three  are  gathered  together  in  my  name,  there  am  I  in 
the  midst  of  them."-  The  presence  is  communal,  the  authority 
is  corporate,  the  freedom  is  that  of  members. 

And  yet  the  vision  splendid  that  haunts  both  the  Romanist 
and  the  Anglican,  is  more  than  a  dream ;  more  than  merely  an 
echo  of  the  Saviour's  prayer — "that  they  all  may  be  one."^  The 
integrations  of  the  differences  has  always  been  more  real  than 
apparent.  The  bond  of  identity  has  been  the  ever-present  Lord. 
And  yet  the  differences  are  greater  than  can  belong  to  a  normal 
and  healthy  body.  A  re-united  Christendom  is  a  consummation 
devoutly  to  be  wished,  and  labored,  for.  The  integration  of 
Romanism  and  Protestantism  is  the  goal,  necessary  though  dis- 
tant. They  are  stages  in  the  religious  development  and  educa- 
tion of  the  world  into  Christianity,  and  not  world-historical  op- 
positions that  must  or  ought  to  persist.  Both  of  them  are 
forms  of  a  "religion  of  authority."  In  neither  of  them  is  the  in- 
dividual to  "work  out  his  own  salvation."  The  Reformation-cry 
"Salvation  is  by  faith  alone,"  made  that  faith  not  to  be  work  of 
man,  but  an  act  of  divine  grace — the  work  of  God  in  Christ, 
working  in  men  "both  to  will  and  to  do  of  His  good  pleasure."* 
Luther,  in  referring  to  this  text,  exhorted  men  to  work  out,  to 
root  out  and  cast  out  all  merely  human  salvation,  that  the  liber- 
ating work  of  God  might  be  of  effect. 

This  note  of  authority  belongs  to  the  whole  of  historical 
Protestantism,  and  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  when  this  note 
goes.  Protestantism  will  cease  to  be  religiously  educative. 

The  whole  question  of  the  relations  of  Romanism  and  Pro- 
testantism deserves  a  larger  treatment  than  can  be  given  here. 
But  a  brief  treatment  may  be  in  place. 

'  St.  John,  X,  17. 
'  St.  John,  XVII,  21. 
»  St.  Matthew,  XVII,  20. 
*Philippians,  II,  12,  13. 


LOISY  137 

I  have  referred  to  the  personal  tone  in  Sabatier's  volumes. 
They  are  the  confession  of  his  personal  faith.  The  same  is  true, 
in  a  less  marked  way,  of  Harnack's  book.  I  have  faulted  them 
both,  for  their  allowing  their  private  prejudices  to  prevent  their 
taking  an  objective  view  of  Christianity,  Let  me  make  a  pre- 
liminary personal  confession  of  private  prejudices ;  of  sub- 
jective likes  and  convictions.  Practically  they  are  the  same  as 
those  of  Sabatier  and  Harnack,  anti-sympathetic  with  either 
the  Anglo-Catholic  or  Roman  Catholic.  I  have  the  same  in- 
bred strain  of  subjectivity  in  my  religious  life  and  sympathies. 
I  have  been  suckled  at  the  mother-breast  of  Protestantism.  I 
have  a  dislike  for  ecclesiasticism.  In  temper,  I  am  a  non-con- 
formist. Following  my  likes,  I  should  seek  the  religious  or- 
ganization with  the  minimum  of  ecclesiasticism.  The  anti- 
ecclesiastical  spirit  has  been  bred  into  the  very  fibre  of  my 
spiritual  life  by  my  Scotch  Presbyterian  ancestry  and  training. 
To  this  day  I  can  never  hear  disparaging  remarks  about  the 
Presbyterians  without  irrepressible  ire  being  roused  within  me. 
I  am  a  member  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church — so  long  as 
it  remains  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church,  and  no  longer — 
from  intellectual  convictions.  I  have  no  sympathy  with  the  so- 
called  Catholic  party  in  our  Church.  I  take  it  to  be  a  psycho- 
logical impossibility  that  I  should  ever  become  a  Roman  Catho- 
lic or  an  Anglo-Catholic.  Following  my  private  taste  I  should, 
rather  than  go  Romeward,  go  to  the  Society  of  Friends,  and 
enjoy  the  inner  light,  and  the  calm  and  serene  strenuosity,  the 
personal  independence,  the  gentle  firmness,  the  quiet  inner  life 
of  the  peace  loving  Quakers.  Let  me  call  myself  a  Christian 
mystic — one  whose  inner  life  goes  on  under  ecclesiastical  forms 
that  sit  lightly  upon  me.  Why  I  became,  and  why  I  remain  a 
good  Churchman,  then,  is  on  objective  intellectual  grounds.  I 
find  that  Christian  mysticism  is  not  a  merely  subjective  product, 
but  that,  historically,  it  has  always  been  born  and  nurtured 
within  the  folds  of  the  Church — Roman  or  other.     Mysticism 


138  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

itself  has  no  genius  for  organization  or  propagation.  It  be- 
longs to  the  Oriental  type  of  subjectivity.  It  is  beautiful  and 
attractive.  But  it  never  has  given  a  form  of  historical  Chris- 
tianity. It  is  sporadic  and  individual.  It  is  like  the  pearl  that 
is  no  part  of  the  healthy  oyster.  So  I  believe  that  even  Chris- 
tian mysticism  is  a  form  of  Christianity,  that,  speaking  historic- 
ally and  objectively,  can  never  give  or  maintain  a  form  of  the 
Church  on  earth. 

Vital,  progressive,  missionary  and  educating  Christianity  al- 
ways has  had,  and  always  must  have  a  body.  It  must  be  an  or- 
ganized body,  with  polity,  creed  and  cult — external,  objective, 
secular  if  you  will,  in  form — a  kingdom  of  heaven  on  earth — not 
in  heaven.  It  is  not  something  invisible  and  merely  heavenly. 
To  fault  ecclesiastical  Christianity,  is  to  fault  Christianity  for 
living  rather  than  dying  among  men ;  for  existing  to  preserve, 
maintain  and  transmit  the  Gospel. 

All  the  criticism  that  can  be  made  against  this  visible  insti- 
tutional form  of  Christianity,  can  be  put  under  the  commonplace 
remarks  that  nothing  finite  is  perfect ;  that  no  developing  proc- 
ess is  as  good  as  the  developed  process ;  that  the  Christianity  of 
men  has  always  been  profoundly  inferior  to  that  of  God ;  that  the 
Church  militant  is  not  identical  in  perfection  with  the  Church 
triumphant.  Any  total  distrust  of  ecclesiastical  Christianity  is 
pathological.  The  stanch  Churchman  occupies  the  normal 
rational  standpoint. 

Thus,  when  repressing  one's  subjective  likings  and  dislik- 
ings  and  taking  an  objective  view  of  Christianity,  one  is  com- 
pelled to  be  a  stanch  Churchman;  to  contend  for  the  organic 
visible  form  of  Christianity  against  the  merely  subjective,  mys- 
tical, invisible,  pectoral  form  in  which  Sabatier  and  Harnack 
propose  to  place  its  essence.  Historical  Christianity  has  always 
been — up  to  date,  as  Sabatier  allows — a  religion  of  authority. 
Hegel  speaks  of  the  state  as  "the  terrestrial  god."  The  adjec- 
tive "terrestrial"  of  course  makes  it  to  be  less  than  the  absolute 
God.     But  the  noun  "god"  places  the  state — the  whole  concrete 


LOISY  139 

of  a  people's  political  life — as  the  vice-regent  of  God  in  all  that 
concerns  their  secular  welfare.  Its  institutions,  laws,  customs 
are  the  best  formulation  of  the  laws  of  well-being.  In  the  high, 
the  Greek  view  of  it,  the  state  is  jure  divino.  As  such  it  is  au- 
thoritative. 

Thus  St.  Paul  could  write  even  of  the  Roman  state,  that  it 
was  "ordained  of  God,"  "a  minister  of  God  to  thee  for  good."^ 
The  freedom  and  welfare  of  its  members,  for  which  it  exists,  is 
to  be  attained  through  conformity  to  ordained  powers. 

In  the  same  objective  way  we  must  recognize  the  Church  as 
"the  terrestrial  god,"  jure  divino,  a  minister  of  God  for  the  re- 
ligious welfare  of  its  members.  This  is  the  objective  view  that 
all  historical  students  must  take  of  Christianity.  It  is  the  view 
that  Sabatier  and  Harnack  do  not  take.  "The  essence  of  Chris- 
tianity" being  restricted  to  the  feeling  of  filial  relation  with  God 
the  Father,  nearly  everything  which  has  constituted  historical 
Christianity  is  considered  as  a  debasement  of  its  essence. 

Those  who  hate  Christianity  and  would  fain  have  it  perish, 
could  ask  for  no  more  speedy  form  for  its  destruction  than  this 
destruction  of  its  body.  Those  who  are  not  Christians,  but  who 
study  it  simply  as  students  of  history,  must  say  that  there  can 
be  no  hope  of  its  preservation  except  through  its  continuance 
as  a  visible  Church.  Even  Christian  mystics,  when  they  come 
to  analyze  the  process  through  which  they  have  attained  their 
inner  life,  will  find  that  it  has  been  mediated  by  the  work  of  the 
Church.  But  for  the  Church  of  the  ages  having  preserved  and 
promulgated  the  Gospel,  they  would  never  have  had  the  nurture 
that  has  made  them  Christian  mystics.  The  Roman  Catholic 
Church  has  nurtured  the  most  noted  Christian  mystics. 

Taking  an  objective,  rational  and  historical  view  one  does 
not  see  how  to  avoid  the  conclusion  that  the  future  of  Christian- 
ity, like  its  past,  depends  upon  its  being  a  "religion  of  author- 
ity," a  visible,  organized  institution,  with  polity,  creed  and  cult. 
However  much  one's  own  private  subjective  sympathies  may  be 

*  Romans,  XIII,  1-4 


140  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

with  the  standpoint  of  Sabatier  and  Harnack,  he  cannot  but  in- 
tellectually recognize  this  to  be  pathological,  and  the  objective 
view  to  be  the  normal  and  wholesome  one. 

Loisy  accepts  Sabatier  and  Harnack  as  representatives  of 
Protestantism.  But  they,  confessedly,  do  not  represent  his- 
torical Protestantism  up  to  date.  They  only  presume  to  be  the 
earlier  exponents  of  the  Protestantism  of  the  future.  Looking 
at  the  matter  objectively,  one  would  say,  that  if  Protestanism 
ceases  to  be  "a  religion  of  authority"  and  becomes  the  inner 
mystical  life  of  the  spirit  in  the  individual,  then  the  future  of 
historical  Christianity  is  not  with  Protestantism. 

Loisy  says  that  there  is  a  crisis  in  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  now,  and  Sabatier  and  Harnack  voice  the  same  in  re- 
gard to  Protestantism.  The  Zeitgeist  of  modern  culture  de- 
mands of  the  Church,  at  least  a  modus  vivendi  with  itself. 
Modern  culture  must  be  taken  up  and  appropriated  by  the 
Church,  in  order  to  its  being  in  the  future,  as  it  has  been  in  the 
past,  a  minister  of  good  in  the  religious  life  of  humanity.  Sa- 
batier and  Harnack,  recognizing  the  same  crisis  in  Protestant- 
ism, propose  to  meet  it  by  ceasing  to  consider  historical,  institu- 
tional Christianity — the  Church — as  authoritative.  They  both 
err  in  making  Protestanism  to  have  so  little  appreciation  of  the 
Church.  The  early  reformers  were  good  Churchmen.  John 
Calvin  speaks  of  the  Church  with  all  the  fervor  of  a  Cyprian. 
The  Puritans  held  an  extreme  view  of  tht  jure  divino  form  of 
their  polity.  Hooker  was  a  very  much  more  moderate  defender 
of  Episcopacy.  The  belittling  of  the  Church  by  these  writers, 
makes  them  the  exponents  of  a  Protestanism  that  never  was. 

We  demur  on  historical  grounds  to  Loisy's  considering 
them  to  be  the  representatives  of  Protestantism.  And  we  de- 
mur to  their  way  of  meeting  the  crisis. 

We  recognize  as  fully  as  they  do  the  limitations,  errors  and 
evils  of  both  historical  Romanism  and  Protestantism,  We  rec- 
ognize that  the  finite  is  not  the  infinite,  that  "the  terrestrial 


LOISY  141 

god"  is  not  the  absolute  God ;  that  nothing  finite — nothing  that 
is  in.  a  process  of  becoming — is  yet  perfect.  But  we  cannot  rec- 
ognize the  taking  any  form  of  Ufe  out  of  historical  processes 
to  be  a  means  of  continuing  its  life  in  history.  Mere  essence 
can  never  be  an  actuality.  And,  though  no  empirical  actuality 
can  ever  be  the  absolute  reality,  it  is  the  time  and  space  form  of 
the  process  towards  this  reality. 

But  no  historical  form  of  actuality  is  ever  the  merely  brutal 
external — the  mere  body  without  the  soul.  As  a  living  thing, 
it  is  always  the  unity  of  essence  and  its  manifestation — always 
an  insouled  externality.  And  the  mere  manifestation,  the  mere 
external,  is  always  senseless  without  a  soul.  Both  are  abstrac- 
tions. The  actuality  is  the  truth  of  them  both,  as  the  living 
man  is  the  truth  of  soul  and  body.  There  is  no  radical  dualism, 
except  of  abstractions.  The  analysis  of  all  experience  gives  us 
the  unity  of  the  dual  abstractions.  Thus  the  Church  is  an 
actuality,  an  ensouled  body,  an  incarnated  soul — the  Gospel  in 
historical  form.  It  is  the  continued  incarnation  of  the  timeless, 
and  spaceless  Logos  in  temporal,  historical  processes.  When 
it  becomes  merely  subjective,  it  passes  out  of  objectivity,  out  of 
history. 

Again,  no  form  of  actuality,  no  form  of  time  and  space  ex- 
istence is  ever  merely  static.  It  is  always  in  a  process — either 
of  ripening  or  rotting.  Even  its  rotting  is  a  stage  of  ripening 
into  other  form.  Development  is  ever  self-development,  a  ris- 
ing on  stepping  stones  of  a  dead  self  to  a  higher  self. 

Hence,  though  every  form  of  actuality  be  a  form  of  reality, 
we  must  have  degrees  of  reality  in  the  dynamic  process  of  de- 
velopment. One  form  of  any  actuality  is  either  higher  or  lower 
than  another  form.  The  new-born  babe  is  a  higher  degree  of 
reality  than  the  unborn  foetus;  the  child  and  the  man  higher 
forms  than  the  new-born  babe. 

Now  to  apply  this  to  the  Christianity,  we  must  maintain, 
1(1)  that  the  Church  is  actual  Christianity,  and,  (2)  that  its  dif- 
ferent forms  are  different  degrees  of  reality — different  stages 


142  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

of  the  historical  realization  of  that  absolute  religion,  which  is 
always  sublimely  superior  to  the  Christianity  of  men.  Roman- 
ism and  Protestantism  are  to-day  the  chief  forms  of  institu- 
tional Christianity  in  the  modern  world.  It  is  open  to  the  stu- 
dent of  history,  to  note  the  mighty  work  of  these  two  branches 
of  the  Church  in  the  past,  to  estimate  their  present  worth  and 
influence,  and  to  forecast  the  future  of  historical  Christianity. 

This  would  have  to  be  an  appreciation  of  the  work  of  the 
Church  under  the  three  rubrics  of: 

(i)     Polity  and  Discipline. 

(2)  Creed  and  Doctrine. 

(3)  Cult,  or  Worship. 

Putting  ourselves  at  the  standpoint  of  an  "impartial  specta- 
tor," or  a  student  of  history  and  institutions,  we  may  briefly  in- 
dicate what  would  require  a  volume  to  express. 

One  sees  these  three  forms  to  have  been  essential  constitu- 
tive factors  in  historical  Christianity.  They  have  made  it  both 
a  religion  of  authority  and  a  religion  of  spiritual  nurture — a 
preserver,  a  defender  and  a  propagator  of  the  Gospel.  He  is  a 
dreamer  who  thinks  that  such  a  mighty  form  of  human  institu- 
tion as  the  Church  is  moribund,  or  that  there  will  be  any  future 
Christianity  without  these  factors.  We  should  say  that, 
whether  we  believe  in  Christianity  or  not,  the  very  factors  that 
Harnack  decries  as  the  Catholicizing  elements  in  the  Protestant 
Churches,  are  all  notes  of  the  self-preservation  of  the  Church 
and  her  work. 

Harnack,  as  we  have  seen,  refers  to  the  mcreasing  reference 
to  the  Church,  her  ways  and  teaching;  the  increasing  au- 
thority accorded  the  Creeds  as  distinguished  from  systems 
of  doctrinal  theology ;  the  development  of  the  liturgical  side ;  the 
exaltation  of  the  Sacraments ;  and  the  slighting  of  preaching  for 
the  work  of  social  amelioration.  If  Protestantism  has  suffered 
'a  decline  of  these  factors,  her  re-appreciation  of  them  are  signs 
of  a  better  organized  life  and  better  aids  to  her  work. 

I.  Polity  and  Discipline. — An  impartial,  or  even  an  adverse. 


LOISY  143 

spectator  recognizes  the  power  of  organization  and  discipline 
in  the  maintenance  of  any  form  of  institution.  A  long-Hved 
and  broad-spread  and  efficient  institution  validates  its  polity. 
Here,  surely  one  must  acknowledge  the  vitality  and  efficiency 
of  Roman  Catholicism.  History  shows  no  equal  to  it.  It 
shows  no  sign  of  being  doomed  to  being  merely  "a  parenthesis 
in  the  record  of  the  larger  life  of  Christendom." 

The  Protestant  Church  of  England,  and  the  Protestant 
Episcopal  Church  of  America  have  the  same  polity  and  validity. 
That  is  one  factor  of  the  Universal  Church  that,  fortunately, 
the  Church  of  England  was  not  compelled  to  drop  at  the  Refor- 
mation. 

What  student  of  history  would  advise  any  one  of  these  three 
branches  of  the  Church  to  surrender  the  historic  Episcopate  as 
a  means  of  self-preservation,  in  the  present  crisis?  The  view 
of  the  judicious  Hooker  commends  itself.  The  historic  Epis- 
copate is,  in  the  long  run,  necessary  to  the  well-being  of  the 
Church,  though  it  be  not  necessary  to  the  being  of  it.  It  is  the 
form  of  the  organic  unity  of  the  Church  throughout  the  ages. 
Evidently  other  forms  have  been  jure  divino  for  the  propaga- 
tion of  the  Gospel.  One  must  needs  be  stone-blind,  intoxicated 
with  sectarian  conceit,  not  to  see  fruitful  branches  of  the  Church 
which  are  not  yet  Episcopal  in  polity.  Still,  one  must  see  that 
this  form  has  been  the  most  continuous,  oecumenical  and  elastic 
one.  Historical  circumstances  justified  the  Protestant 
Churches  on  the  Continent  in  letting  go  this  factor,  in  their  po- 
tent protest  against  the  corruptions  of  the  Catholic  Church. 
And  the  magnificent  and  beneficent  work  of  these  Churches  for 
four  centuries,  prove  Hooker's  contention  that  the  historic 
Episcopate  is  not  necessary  to  the  being  of  a  Church.^ 

The  impartial  spectator  need  say  but  little  as  to  Discipline. 
It  is  essential  in  any  body,  in  order  to  its  doing  its  work.  Any 
institution  must  be  authoritative  in  order  to  be  disciplinary  and 

*Cf.  at  length  my  Studies  in  Hegel's  Philosophy  of  Religion,  Ap- 
pendix on  Christian  Unity. 


144  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

educative.  No  church  has  ever  held  to  its  special  forms  of  dis- 
cipline being  final.  As  Article  XXXIV  of  the  Articles  of  Re- 
ligion of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  puts  it :  "Every  par- 
ticular or  national  Church  hath  authority  to  ordain,  change  and 
abolish  ceremonies  or  rites  of  the  Church  ordained  only  by 
man's  authority,  so  that  all  things  be  done  to  edifying." 

Finally,  the  impartial  student  will  say,  that  everyone  who 
belittles  the  Church  and  her  ways,  is  weakening  her  power  for 
good.  The  maintenance  of  the  Church  is  to  the  Gospel,  what 
the  maintenance  of  the  body  is  to  the  soul.  He  is  a  novelist  in 
spirit,  who  could  expect  either  to  see  an  institutionalized  form 
of  a  religion  of  the  Spirit,  or  to  have  a  Church  of  the  future 
sectarianized  from  the  Church  of  the  ages. 

II.  Creed  and  Doctrine. — The  impartial  spectator  of  insti- 
tutions sees  how  every  institution  naturally  and  necessarily  be- 
gets dogma — some  intellectual  expression  of  its  principles,  con- 
stitution, by-laws  and  objects  and  methods.  This  is  more  par- 
ticularly true  with  a  teaching  institution. 

Harnack  properly  distinguishes  between  the  creeds  of  the 
Church,  i.  e.,  The  Apostles'  and  The  Nicene  Creeds,  and  the 
ever-varying  doctrines  of  orthodoxy.  As  a  matter  of  fact 
these  Catholic  creeds  of  the  Church  have  been  held  in  common 
by  both  Romanists  and  Protestants.  That  was  one  part  of  the 
Christian  heritage  that  the  Reformers  did  not  give  up.  They 
have  ever  been  sacredly  guarded  as  the  very  Constitution  of  the 
teaching  Church.  In  the  decay  of  orthodoxy,  this  reversion  to 
the  Catholic  Creeds  with  increased  respect,  is  a  sign  of  whole- 
some self-preservation.  The  decay  of  orthodoxy  harms  them 
not.  They  abide  as  the  charter  of  faith,  and  of  freedom  from 
temporary  systems  of  theology.  Harnack  considers  this  to  be 
a  sign  of  the  Catholicizing  of  Protestanism.  But  it  is  nothing 
more  than  a  revival  of  the  appreciation  of  the  oecumenical 
creeds  that  historical  Protestantism  has  always  held. 

Technical  orthodoxy  is  well-nigh  dead  in  most  of  the  Prot- 
estant Churches.    Its  doctrines  of  the  verbal  inspiration  of  the 


LOISY  145 

Bible ;  of  sin ;  of  the  atonement ;  its  mechanical  tritheism ;  its 
gloomy  Sabbaths  and  its  lurid  eschatology,  of  which  the  creeds 
say  nothing,  have  all  gone,  except  as  they  are  conserved  in 
more  catholic  ideals. 

Orthodoxy  was  essentially  rationalistic.  Unitarianism  was 
its  legitimate  child.  It  dropped  the  "we  believe"  for  the  "I 
believe"  and  hence  is  now  in  danger  of  dropping  even  this 
affirmation  of  individual  belief.  Never  an  ecclesiastical  Pope 
demanded  such  subservience  of  private  judgment  as  did  ortho- 
doxy in  its  palmy  days.  Its  deadly  heresy  was  its  limiting 
God's  revelation  to  one  logical  system  of  doctrine,  and  this  is 
leading  to-day  to  a  denial  of  His  revelation  in  any  form.  His- 
torical justice  can  be  accorded  to  the  Puritans  and  their  ortho- 
doxy, without  making  orthodoxy  the  essence  of  the  Gospel. 
The  mistake  of  orthodoxy  has  been  threefold:  the  attempt  to 
arrest  the  constant  metamorphosis  to  which  dogmas  are  sub- 
ject; the  attempt  to  hold  the  provincial  and  temporary  in  ab- 
straction from  the  oecumenical;  and  the  attempt  to  abstract  it 
from  the  full  concrete  life  of  Christianity  and  make  it  to  be  the 
essence  of  that  life. 

The  first  escape  has  been  into  ethical  Christianity.  The 
second  has  been  that  opened  up  by  Ritschl — ^back  to  the  "crystal 
Christ."  The  next  escape  has  been  into  social  ethics,  or  the 
philanthropic  work  of  "institutional  churches" — the  service  of 
Christ  being  interpreted  as  that  of  service  to  fellow  men. 
Great  and  faithful  as  have  been  these  three  forms  of  activity, 
with  those  who  have  thrown  off  the  incubus  of  orthodoxy,  we 
find  the  common  danger  to  be  that  of  de-religionizing  the 
Church.  From  ethics  to  humanitarianism,  and  from  the  wor- 
ship of  humanity  to  secularism,  the  process  goes,  when  di- 
vorced from  theology  and  from  the  specifically  religious  life. 
It  is  the  sense  of  this  danger  that  is  leading  to  what  Harnack 
decries  as  the  promoting  of  the  authority  of  Catholic  creeds. 
It  is  a  catholicizing  element  that  is  to  be  welcomed. 

III.     Cult  or  Worship. — If  we  were  asked  to  name  the  spe- 

10 


146  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

cific  factor  of  the  Church  that  makes  for  the  nurture  of  the 
specifically  religious  life,  we  should  have  to  say  that  it  is  that 
cult  or  worship.  It  is  therein  that  the  at-one-ment  of  man 
with  God  is  realized.  As  Loisy  says :  "History  knows  no  in- 
stance of  a  religion  without  a  Cult."  And  "Christianity  had 
to  find  a  ritual  or  cease  to  exist." 

The  central  act  of  worship  has  always  been  that  of  the  sac- 
rifice, as  the  act  of  real  communion  between  man  and  God. 
Prayer  and  praise  and  Scripture  reading  and  the  sacraments — 
the  whole  of  a  cult  is  distinguished  by  the  preponderating  em- 
phasis it  places  upon  the  divine  side  of  this  communion.  It  is 
that  which  elevates  man  from  being  a  mere  secular  creature; 
makes  him  conscious  of  his  divine  kinship,  and  of  the  divine 
graciousness. 

So  in  the  Christian  Church,  the  Eucharist,  the  Holy  Com- 
munion, the  Lord's  Supper  or  the  Mass,  has  always  had  the 
central  place,  as  the  central  act  of  worship.  And,  unless  the 
Church  of  the  future  abdicates  the  function  of  the  Church  of 
the  ages,  she  will  continue  to  be  a  Church  with  worship  as  her 
central  fire,  her  heart,  whence  she  pulsates  life  into  all  other  of 
her  forms  and  functions.  Whatever  other  function  and  minis- 
try for  men  she  may  have,  she  must  be  a  Church  with  a  cult. 
Its  central  act  of  worship  must  be  to  celebrate  and  realize  the 
union  of  the  Divine  with  the  human.  It  is  thus  that  it  will  hum- 
ble and  exalt  the  worshipers,  and  give  them  that  inspiration  of 
more  than  human  power,  in  the  strength  of  which  they  may  go 
forward  to  fulfill  all  the  various  offices  of  human  culture  in  the 
larger  Kingdom  of  God.  Its  chief  function  must  be  specifically 
religious.  It  is  only  as  it  is  thus  distinctively  religious — mys- 
tical, if  you  will — that  it  can  have  any  permanent  ministrant 
function  for  a  humanity  that  is  incurably  religious ;  minister  to 
the  heavenly  homesickness  of  prodigal  sons  of  God ;  minister 
in  the  Divine  drama  of  the  education  of  the  race.  The  Church 
is  not  to  mistake  its  central  function  for  that  of  literature,  sci- 


LOISY  147 

ence,  art,  philosophy;  for  that  of  the  press  or  that  of  social 
reform. 

The  Church  is  not  the  only  minister  of  God  in  His  work. 
But  her  work  is  to  minister  to  the  religious  side  of  man's 
nature — the  side  that  raises  man  above  himself  in  merely  secular 
relations.  Its  function  is  primal,  abiding  and  central;  giving 
inspiration  and  significance  more  than  secular  to  all  forms  of 
secular  activity.  Religion  is  the  central  sun  of  the  whole  sys- 
tem, that  shines  that  all  else  may  thrive  and  be  of  worth. 

It  may  be  granted  that  Protestantism  has  too  frequently 
neglected  this  factor  in  the  Church's  life.  It  may  be  granted 
that  too  individualistic  a  conception  of  the  religious  life  has 
tended  to  throw  a  shadow  upon  the  place  of  corporate  worship. 
And  so  it  should  be  held  that  signs  of  a  liturgical  revival  are 
signs  of  a  new  fountain  of  inspiration  for  Protestantism. 

In  all  these  Catholicizing  tendencies,  there  is  no  reversion 
to  what  is  distinctively  Roman.  Rome  has  them — ^that  is  her 
Catholic  side.  But  Rome  has  much  besides,  that  makes  her 
distinctively  the  Roman  Church. 

Protestantism  has  much  of  distinctively  religious  and  ethical 
life  that  Rome  lacks.  Perhaps  it  is  impossible  for  our  im- 
partial spectator  to  have  an  unbiased  historical  judgment  as 
to  the  relative  worth  of  these  two  forms  of  the  visible  Church. 
So  far  as  he  can,  he  must  recognize  them  both  as  historical 
phenomena  of  most  momentous  significance  and  worth  in 
the  religious  nurture  of  men.  He  must  appreciate  the  ex- 
cellences and  the  defects  of  both.  He  must  say  that  the 
Church  in  the  future  will  be  stronger  in  proportion  as  she  arms 
herself  with  the  best  of  both.  He  must  judge  that  a  reunited 
Christendom  would  be  more  powerful  than  its  present  divided 
form;  that  a  Protestantized  Catholic  Church,  or  a  Catholi- 
cized Protestant  Church  would  be  the  best  form  of  a  nurturing 
and  missionary  Church.  The  Roman  Church  has  the  advan- 
tage of  organic  unity.  The  Protestant  Churches  have  the  dis- 
advantage of  sectarianism.     The  first  step,  then,  should  be  the 


148  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

organic  unification  of  the  Protestant  Churches,  and  the  reclaim- 
ing their  full  Catholic  heritage  of  polity,  creed  and  cult.  The 
efficient  Church  of  the  future  will  not  be  sectarian.  The 
Church  that  will  be  strong  as  the  propagator  of  the  Gos- 
pel, will  be  thoroughly  corporate — corporate  in  polity,  creed 
and  cult.  Its  communal  forms  will  work  the  communal  spirit, 
to  the  edifying  of  its  members.  Divisive  individuaHsm,  as 
urged  by  Sabatier  arid  Harnack,  has  no  promise  of  a  future  in 
religion.  Their  reduction  of  religion  to  a  subjective  feeling  in 
the  heart  of  the  individual,  is  but  a  perversion  of  the  funda- 
mental Protestant  conception  of  the  personal  element  in  relig- 
ion, an  element  that  is  also  in  Romanism. 

The  late  Dr.  Hedge,  a  Unitarian  preacher,  and  a  professor 
of  Church  History  in  Harvard  University,  gave  the  following 
judgment: 

"That  the  spirit  of  God  may  and  does  sometimes  act  directly 
on  the  soul,  without  intervention  of  Church  or  any  secondary 
agent,  is  a  fundamental  principle  of  Christian  doctrine,  never 
to  be  surrendered.  Every  fresh  dispensation  of  religion  has 
originated  in  that  way.  But  practically,  for  the  mass  of  man- 
kind, the  spirit  acts  through  the  Church ;  and  every  sect  that  has 
grounded  itself  on  the  principle  of  private  inspiration,  from 
Montanism  to  Quakerism,  has  perished  utterly,  or  drags  a  de- 
cadent, dying  life.  Protestantism  did  not  at  the  start  assume 
that  ground.  It  was  not  a  protest  against  the  Church  as  such, 
but  only  against  certain  abuses  and  corruptions.  And  Protes- 
tantism itself,  unless  it  can  recall  its  separations  and  atone  its 
schisms,  and,  renouncing  dogmatic  willfulness,  round  itself  into 
one,  is  doomed  to  pass  away,  and  be  reabsorbed  in  the  larger 
fold  of  an  oecumenical  Church." 

These  are  strong  and  notable  words,  coming  from  a  member 
of  that  body  that  stands  foremost  in  its  maintenance  of  the 
individualistic  point  of  view.  They  are  the  words  of  one  who 
was  both  an  historian  and  a  philosopher,  expressing  his  objec- 
tive judgment  rather  than  his  private  preferences. 


LOISY  149 

If  Protestantism  cannot  do  this,  what  if  Rome,  which  has 
often  shown  master  strokes  of  wisdom,  should  arouse  to  her  op- 
portunity and  rise  to  her  duty?  What  if,  dropping  her  now 
provincial  name  and  character,  Roman,  she  might  seek  to  re- 
integrate all  Protestantism?  It  looks  like  a  seeming  impossi- 
bility. But  if  the  day  ever  comes  that  Protestantism  ceases  to 
be  "a.  religion  of  authority,"  and  the  Romanism  itself  can  take 
up  the  noble  fruits  and  principles  of  Protestantism,  then  the  time 
will  come  when  every  Christian  must  answer  the  question  to 
such  Catholicism,  why  or  why  not  ? 

One  should  not  look  with  distrust  and  alarm  on  what  is 
called  the  American  party  in  the  Church  of  Rome.  It  repre- 
sents the  best  intellectual  and  ethical  forces  now  making  for 
a  true  Catholicizing  of  Romanism,  to  meet  the  needs  of  the 
higher  life  of  the  Protestant  world.  The  very  able  Father 
Hecker,  a  pervert  from  the  Episcopal  Church,  was,  as  is  gen- 
erally recognized  in  France,  the  author  of  I'americanisme. 
Among  the  present  representatives  of  this  advanced  or  liberal 
interpretation  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  are  Archbishops 
Ireland,  Gibbons,  Keane  and  Spalding;  the  Very  Rev.  Mgr. 
O'Connell,  Rector  of  the  Catholic  University  of  America, 
and  Professor  Zahm.  Loyal  to  their  Church  of  the  ages,  they 
have  sympathies  that  are  reaching  out  towards  ways  of  adapt- 
ing it  to  the  needs  of  the  modern  world,  that  are  temptingly 
calling  to  many  who  would  turn  a  deaf  ear  to  the  Ultramontan- 
ists  and  Jesuits  in  the  Roman  Church.  I  believe  that  they  are 
in  earnest  in  their  irenical  temper  and  attitude. 

The  Church  exists  as  the  religious  organ  within  the  larger 
Kingdom  of  God  in  the  life  of  the  world.  She  must  adapt  her- 
self to  the  other  functions  as  they  change  and  grow — to  the  po- 
litical, intellectual  and  practical  acquisitions  of  men ;  assimilate 
their  acquisitions,  tardily,  it  is  true,  for  that  is  the  conservative 
genius  of  all  institutions.  To  keep  fully  abreast  with  modem 
thought  and  scientific  theories  would  be  premature.  The 
Church  whose  chief  energies  are  spent  in  this  constant  read- 


ISO  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

justment,  will  miss  its  proper  work ;  will  be  diluted  into  a  weak 
form  of  other  functions,  and  lose  its  own  distinctive  genius  and 
raison  d'etre. 

The  future  of  Christianity  is  bound  up  with  the  future  of 
the  Church.  There  is  no  other  human  instrumentality  for  the 
preservation  and  propagation  of  the  Gospel. 

Hence,  even  an  outsider  would  advise  the  stanch  mainte- 
nance of  the  external  Church,  and  the  re-unification  of  its  vari- 
ous parts,  as  the  wisest  means  for  its  continued  existence  and  the 
successful  performance  of  its  function. 

The  following  practical  suggestion  is  obvious.  Let  no  relig- 
ious man  speak  disrespectfully  of  the  form  of  any  other  man's 
religion.  Let  Christians  of  every  Church  resolutely  restrain 
the  critical  attitude  towards  other  Churches.  Let  us  Protes- 
tants cease  from  the  vulgar  form  of  criticising  the  Roman 
Catholics  that  has  been  too  common,  and  let  Roman  Catholics 
recognize  the  religious  life  nurtured  by  the  Protestants  as  kin 
with  their  own.  Let  every  sect  at  least  recognize  that  there 
are  other  sects,  with  the  same  fundamental  end  and  function  of 
nurturing  the  religious  life. 

To  the  religious  man,  the  meanest  flower  of  religion  that 
blows  should  be  regarded  as  sacred.  With  contempt  for  none 
and  with  charity  for  all,  is  a  temper  that  will  do  more  to  pro- 
mote the  religious  life  of  our  generation,  than  any  form  of 
intellectual  reconciliation  of  religion  with  modern  culture. 

We  have  seen  in  a  previous  chapter  how  religion  transcends 
and  fulfills  all  forms  of  morality;  how  it  is  the  transcendent 
element  that  erects  a  man  above  himself  as  a  finite  secular  form 
of  empirical  existence ;  how  it  is  the  completion  and  fruition  of 
all  that  is  truly  human ;  how  it  is  the  beatitude  of  soul,  the  beati- 
tude of  mankind,  which  when  experienced,  makes  man  more 
than  conqueror  in  all  the  transitory  vicissitudes  of  life  and  death, 
because  it  gives  him  the  freedom  and  perfect  peace  that  only 
come  with  at-one-ment  with  God.  Science  gives  us  reconcilia- 
tion with  an  abstract  phase  of  experience,  and  is  doing  a  benefi- 


LOISY  ISI 

cent  work  in  rationalizing  that  side  of  experience.  Organized 
religion  has  always  stood  for  the  work  of  concrete  reason  in 
dealing  with  another  phase  of  truly  human  experience — fully  as 
real,  to  say  the  least,  as  the  phase  with  which  science  deals. 
There  is  no  call  for  any  age-long  religion  to  abdicate  its  specific 
work,  at  the  bidding  of  the  scientific  culture  of  any  age.  She 
can  stand  boldly  and  firmly  on  the  vantage  ground  of  centuries 
of  beneficent  results.  Only  so  far  as  her  interpretation  of  the 
religious  life  has  become  interwoven  with  views  of  a  less  ade- 
quate scientific  description  of  the  physical  world,  does  she  need 
to  re-adjust  herself  to  the  new  views,  and  then,  not  hastily,  nor 
until  the  new  scientific  view  is  firmly  established.  The  religious 
life  can  be  nurtured  in  a  religion  that  is  not  up  to  date  with 
modern  scientific  views.  Besides  the  change  of  the  setting  can- 
not be  made  rapidly,  except  at  the  peril  of  the  religious  life. 
For  that  life  is  largely  in  the  realm  of  feeling.  And  the  attach- 
ments of  feeling,  domestic,  social  or  religious,  cannot  be  rudely 
dealt  with  in  the  merely  intellectual  way. 

Conservatism  is  essential  to  life.  All  such  detachments  must 
be  made  slowly.  Besides  new  views  of  science  are  often  put 
forward  as  divorced  from  and  incompatible  with  any  religion. 
That  is,  some  who  speak  in  the  name  of  science,  contend  that 
religion  is  incredible  in  any  form  in  face  of  the  new  views  of 
science.  When  this  is  done,  I  do  not  see  why  religion,  as  the 
expression  of  the  more  concrete  reason  of  humanity,  should 
not,  for  its  own  self-preservation,  decline  to  give  up  all  for 
nothing.  What  has  been  acquired  has  been  acquired,  in  re- 
ligion as  well  as  in  science.  There  should  be  some  irenical 
rapprochement  on  the  side  of  those  representatives  of  science, 
who  essay  to  give  science  a  metaphysical  interpretation.  Other- 
wise their  obiter  dicta  may  fairly  be  met  with  a  flat  refusal. 
Romanist  and  Protestant  should  join  hands  and  forces  here. 

Sabatier  emphasizes  the  psychological  necessity  of  being  re- 
ligious. That  is  good,  and  upon  the  whole  true — as  true  as 
the  psychological   necessity  of   man's   being   scientific.     That 


isa  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

seems  to  be  the  verdict  of  history.  But  the  necessity  of  being 
reHgious  can  be  put  upon  larger  and  firmer  grounds.  Man  is 
by  nature  a  reHgious  being,  using  nature  here,  not  in  the  em- 
pirical, psychological  sense,  but  in  Aristotle's  sense  of  man's 
ideal  or  perfected  nature.  Psychologically,  religion  might  be  a 
disease  or  an  illusion.  So  also  might  science  be,  as  Von  Hart- 
mann  argues.  Comte  held  religion  to  be  a  disease  found  only 
at  the  cradle  of  nations.  But  his  later  founding  of  the  "religion 
of  humanity,"  shows  that  he  came  to  have  a  more  concrete  view 
of  the  nature  of  man. 

Let  us  put  the  question  thus: — "What  is  the  chief  end  of 
man?"  Take  all  man's  secular  activities  in  practical  life — do- 
mestic, social  and  political;  and  all  in  his  intellectual  life — 
science  and  history  and  literature.  Abstract  resolutely  and  ab- 
solutely from  art,  religion  and  philosophy,  and  we  have,  at  the 
utmost,  a  finite,  secular  end  and  aim.  Beyond  lies  the  existen- 
tial source  and  fount  whence  issue  the  empirical  phenomena  of 
mind  and  matter.  Spencer  calls  it  the  incomprehensible  Power, 
the  Unknown  and  Unknowable,  the  Absolute  whose  "existence 
is  a  necessary  datum  of  consciousness." 

Is  the  gulf  between  phenomena  and  the  unknown  source  and 
substance  of  phenomena  unknowable  or  impassable?  That  is 
the  root  question.  Art,  religion  and  philosophy  affirm  that  it  is 
not.  Schopenhauer  found  in  art  the  only  means  of  bridging 
the  gulf.  Religion,  historically,  has  always  been  a  practical 
affirmation  of  the  transcendence  of  the  limit.  Philosophy  has 
always  been  an  intellectual  affirmation  of  the  same.  The  abso- 
lute is  not  the  unknown.  Art,  religion  and  philosophy  give  us, 
respectively,  the  Beautiful,  the  Good  and  the  True,  as  the 
spheres  in  which  man's  finite  nature  finds  its  supreme  vocation 
and  fruition. 

Now  it  must  be  considerd  that  every  form  of  modern  culture 
which  denies  this,  really  belittles  the  conception  of  the  nature 
and  destiny  of  man.  It  is  an  "either — or"  here.  Either  the 
gulf  is  passable  or  not.     If  it  is  not,  then  we  have  the  merely 


LOISY  153 

secular  and  phenomenal  conception  of  man's  nature.  It  if  is, 
we  have  the  other  conception.  The  power  of  ideals  is  mighty. 
As  a  man  thinks  and  feels  so  he  does. 

Now  in  particular,  religion  stands  for  the  affirmation  that, 
psychologically  and  historically  at  least,  mankind  has  always 
passed  the  gulf,  into  organic  unity  with  the  source  of  all  that  is 
^finite  and  empirical. 

To  the  question,  "What  is  the  chief  end  of  man?"  religion 
has  universally  answered,  "Man's  chief  end  is  to  glorify  God, 
and  to  enjoy  Him  forever,"  though  it  was  left  for  the  Westmin- 
ster divines  to  frame  this  short  and  comprehensive  reply  to  the 
short  but  most  momentous  question,  "What  is  the  chief  end  of 
man?" — the  supreme  vocation,  the  final  cause,  the  true  nature 
of  man  and  humanity? 

From  the  empirical  standpoint,  the  whole  of  modern  science 
and  culture  are  as  empirical  as  religion — all  being  relative  to 
man's  psychological  nature.  On  this  ground  alone,  religion  as 
the  organized,  long-lived  and  persistent  self-expression  of  hu- 
man nature  or  reason,  has  just  as  valid  justification  as  any  form 
of  science  or  intellectual  culture.  It  can  demand  the  exercise  of 
its  function  as  being  on  a  par,  as  to  rationality,  with  them.  But 
when  the  thing  is  thought  through ;  when  the  relativity  of  sci- 
ence as  restricted  to  the  finite  and  the  phenomenal  is  seen ;  when 
the  limitations  of  the  categories  which  it  uses  are  seen,  then 
philosophy  gives  religion  its  absolute  intellectual  justification. 
To  be  conscious  of  a  limit,  is  to  have  already  transcended  the 
limit.  Even  Spencer  cannot  avoid  this  confession.  The  finite 
is  known  to  be  finite,  only  because  the  infinite  is  known  to  be. 
The  knowledge  of  the  Infinite,  and  the  Absolute,  and  the  Per- 
fect, is  prior  to,  and  implied,  in  the  knowledge  of  the  finite  as 
finite.  Philosophy,  as  well  as  art  and  religion,  bridges  the  gfulf, 
and  in  doing  so  gives  the  intellectual  justification  of  the  tran- 
scendence made  practically  in  art  and  religion. 

After  philosophy  comes  the  philosophy  of  religion,  to  vali- 
date its  function  and  to  make  a  comparative  estimate  of  its  va- 


154  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

rious  forms — non-Christian  and  Christian,  Roman  and  Prot- 
estant, in  their  function  of  reconciUation,  of  making  man  at- 
one with  God,  "whose  service  is  perfect  freedom." 

If  reUgion  is  incredible  from  the  standpoint  of  modern  sci- 
ence; if  modem  science  is — though  as  strict  science  it  says 
nothing  in  the  matter — irreHgious,  as  well  as  scientific,  then  re- 
ligion may  demand  that  science  reconcile  itself  with  religion. 

Man,  as  rational  dares,  nay,  must  be  religious.  To  put  the 
matter  strongly,  one  might  rationally  say  that  the  religious  inter- 
pretation of  experience  given  by  any  religion  of  authority,  pagan 
or  Christian,  is  more  concretely  true  than  that  given  by  any  ag- 
nostic form  of  modern  culture ;  that  if  choice  must  be  made  be- 
tween religion  and  no  science,  or  science  and  no  religion,  that 
the  concretely  rational  and  human  might  resolutely  cling  to  re- 
ligion. 

"...    Great  God !  I'd  rather  be 
A  pagan  suckled  in  a  creed  outworn." 

Better  the  man  nurtured  in  any  form  of  "a  religion  of  au- 
thority," than  the  man  without  any  religious  nurture. 

Religion  must  claim  her  right  to  be  left  free  to  perform  her 
truly  human  function.  It  should  first  of  all,  to  use  Plato's  ex- 
pression, mind  its  own  business.  Apologetics  are  secondary. 
The  attempt  to  continuously  re-adjust  herself  to  the  kaleido- 
scopic changes  of  modern  culture  diverts  her  from  her  proper 
function.  The  effect  of  this  eflfort  too  often  is  the  perplexity 
that  bafHes  activity. 

"The  centipede  was  happy  quite,  until  the  toad  in  fun 
Asked,  pray  which  leg  comes  after  which? 
Which  raised  her  mind  to  such  a  pitch 
She  lay  distracted  in  the  ditch 

Considering  how  to  run." 

This  doggerel,  vulgar  though  it  be,  aptly  depicts  the  condi- 
tion of  very  many  religious  men  to-day,  who  are  trying  to  har- 
monize their  religion  with  modern  culture. 

The  truth  is  that  the  religious  man  should  dare,  first  of  all. 


LOISY  155 

to  be  religious.  He  should  dare  to  repeat  to  modern  culture 
the  words  I  recently  saw  inscribed  on  a  sun-dial : — 

"You  go  by  the  shadow, 
I  go  by  the  Sun." 

If  he  needs  it,  he  can  have  the  psychological,  the  historical  and 
the  philosophical  justification  for  his  doing  this. 

Sabatier  justifies  the  subjective  psychological  side.  We 
have  seen  the  limitations  of  this. 

Loisy  justifies  it  historically.  The  danger  here  is  either  that 
of  accepting  the  brute-actual  as  the  ultimate-rational,  or  the 
danger  of  the  historical  method — that  of  sitting  apart,  and 

"Holding  no  form  of  creed 
But  contemplating  all." 

If  one  must  have  an  intellectual  justification  for  being  a  re- 
ligious conformist,  he  must  go  to  philosophy.  And  the  Cath- 
olic philosophy  of  the  ages  gives  the  justification,  the  vindica- 
tion, the  apologetics.  We  have  objected  to  the  reconciliation 
offered  by  Sabatier  and  Harnack,  because  they  yield  all,  and  re- 
tain nothing,  except  the  religion  of  mere  subjectivity.  We  have 
commended  the  practical  effect,  for  the  time,  of  the  whole 
Ritschlian  school,  in  enabling  one  to  dare  to  have  the  religion 
of  mere  subjectivity.  We  have  faulted  it  with  being,  in  the 
long  run,  no  more  than  the  ostrich's  device  of  hiding  its  head 
in  the  sand.  The  truth  is,  in  fact,  that  in  being  religious, 
man  has  a  right  to  be  erect. 

If  there  be  any  warfare  between  religion  and  an  irreligious 
modern  culture,  then  it  behooves  men  of  all  forms  of  religion  to 
join  hands  and  forces. 

"The  religion  of  the  spirit"  is  as  incredible  to  an  irreligious 
culture  as  any  "religion  of  authority."  The  religions  of  author- 
ity— Romanism  and  Protestantism — should  in  every  way  pos- 
sible recognize  each  other  as  allies  in  the  contest  for  man's 
inalienable  right  to  religious  nurture. 

Man,  humanity  is  not,  as  agnostic  modern  culture  asserts. 


IS6  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

securus  adversus  Deum.  Man,  humanity  is  only  securus  cum 
Deo.  Religion  is  the  practical  bond  that  realizes  this  organic 
unity,  and  makes  one  secure  and  free  m  the  experience  of  a  re- 
ligion of  authority.  Let  the  most  cultivated  man,  the  man  fully 
abreast  with  modern  thought  and  science,  then,  frankly  and  un- 
reservedly dare  to  be  religious — to  be  a  conformist  to  some  form 
of  a  religion  of  authority,  and  therein  to  find  his  most  concrete 
form  of  freedom.     Let  him  say  to  modern  culture  and  science : 

"You  go  by  the  shadow, 
I  go  by  the  Sun." 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  HISTORICAL  METHOD 

(i)  Scientific 
(2)  Philosophical 

The  question  of  the  old  catechism — who  made  you  or  the 
world  or  anything  in  the  world,  is  out  of  date  in  this  age.  At 
least  the  answer  given  would  be  that  of  Topsy :  "Nobody  made 
me,  I'se  growed."  Nobody  has  made  anybody.  Every  body, 
every  form  of  life,  every  form  of  human  belief  and  institution 
has  "growed" — evolved,  developed  out  of  lower  forms,  and 
these  out  of  still  lower  forms  and  so  on  ad  infinitum,  so  that 
"origin"  in  its  original  sense  is  nonsense.  As  in  Zeno's  para- 
dox, that  the  swift-footed  Achilles  could  never  catch  the  slow- 
footed  tortoise,  on  the  hypothesis  of  the  infinite  divisibility  of 
space,  so  here  no  origin  can  be  reached  because  of  the  infinite 
regress  in  time.  There  is  always  a  past,  which  is  the  cause  of 
the  present.  But  that  past  was  once  a  present  and  had  a  causal 
past.  But  practically  some  empirical  "given"  is  generally  as- 
sumed. At  best  this  corresponds  to  the  smart  boy's  answer  to 
the  question,  "Who  made  you?"  "God  made  me  so  big" 
measuring  off  the  length  of  his  arm, — "and  I  grew  the  rest 
myself." 

Let  us  accept  the  current  dictum  that  ours  is  "the  historical 
age"  in  contrast  with  the  theological  age  and  that  of  the  eight- 
eenth century  of  abstract  rationalism.  It  is  needless  to  say  that 
scientific  men  have  fully  abandoned  the  categories  of  "the  age 
of  reason,"  which  looked  upon  everything  as  full-formed,  defi- 
nite and  distinct,  while  ignoring  the  constitutive  relations  be- 
tween them.  It  is  only  an  anachronism,  when  they  appeal  to 
this  abstract  reason  for  a  reason  for  any  doctrine.     The  modern 

157 


IS8  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

scientific  view  is  always  comparative,  genetic  and  historical.  It 
deals  with  relations  between  things  as  constitutive  of  the  things, 
and  with  the  history  of  any  creed  or  deed,  as  its  explanation. 
That  is,  it  uses  "the  historical  method"  of  explaining  every- 
thing. 

What  is  meant  by  the  historical  method  ? 

History  means,  primarily,  a  narration  of  the  chronological 
stages  through  which  anything  has  passed.  It  is  the  narrative 
of  change.  Human  history,  however,  is  no  longer  merely  a 
narrative  of  kings,  popes  and  lords  many — Carlyle's  great- 
man  theory.  It  is  rather  an  attempted  reconstruction  of  the 
changes  in  the  whole  concrete  life  of  the  people  of  a  given  epoch, 
as  connected  with  preceding  and  succeeding  epochs — each 
change  in  the  social  whole  being  accounted  for  by  the  changes 
in  the  preceding  and  environing  social  wholes.  That  is,  it  has 
abandoned  the  eighteenth  century  individualistic,  for  the  modern 
socialistic,  views  of  man.  History  is  still  the  narrative  of 
changes,  but  of  changes  with  long-lived  social  organisms. 

Method  is  a  systematic  way  of  procedure  in  the  study  of 
any  subject.  Mathematics  is  the  method  employed  by  science, 
in  physics.  So  history  is  the  method  now  employed  in  the  study 
of  human  institutions.  That  is,  the  "what"  of  anything  is 
sought  in  its.  past  history.  The  history  of  a  thing  gives  the 
causes  and  nature  of  the  thing.  ,  Thus  the  historical  method- 
applied  to  any  creed  or  organization,  gives  its  explanation  by 
means  of  their  historical  origin  and  series  of  transformations. 
The  how  it  came  about,  tells  what  it  is. 

In  the  use  of  this  method,  the  look  is  too  often  only  back- 
ward, while  the  forward  look  demanded  by  the  truly  human  is 
neglected.  That  is  the  vice  of  the  empirical  school  of  which  we 
shall  shortly  speak — the  vice  of  banishing  teleology  from  the 
historical  explanation  of  human  institutions — of  neglecting  the 
force  of  ideals  in  lifting  upwards,  while  seeing  with  keen  vision 
only  the  mechanical  forces  at  work  to  force  forward — forward, 
that  is,  in  time  and  space,  for  there  can  be  no  moral  or  human 


THE  HISTORICAL  METHOD  159 

forward  without  ideals  and  goals.  In  fact  the  historical  school, 
like  that  of  physical  science,  has  come  to  accept  Comte's  three 
stages  or  methods  of  thought :  the  Theological,  the  Metaphysi- 
cal and  the  Positive.^ 

Roughly  speaking,  according  to  Comte,  the  Theological 
dominated  the  seventeenth  century,  the  Metaphysical  the  eight- 
eenth century,  the  Positive  coming  into  predominance  in  the 
latter  part  of  the  nineteenth  century.  The  theological  mode  of 
thought  looked  upon  nature  as  ruled  by  many  supernatural 
beings,  and  finally  by  one  God.  A  supernatural  revelation  gave 
men  dogmatic  truth,  and  a  dogmatic  philosophy  dominated  their 
study  of  nature — ^both  as  to  efficient  and  final  causes. 

Then  came  the  metaphysical  age.  The  unhistorical  eight- 
eenth century  set  up  the  principle  of  an  abstract  reason.  Its 
belief  in  the  absolute  truths  of  reason  was  just  as  dogmatic  as 
the  theological  view.  The  light  of  reason  was  considered  the 
sufficient  and  never  failing  source  of  truth.  The  absolutely 
certain  principles  of  reason,  gave  the  standard  by  which  to 
weigh  and  reject  political  and  theological  dogmas,  and  all  the 
institutions  they  represented.  They  also  furnished  the  means 
for  building  brand  new  forms — new  governments  and  social 
institutions,  a  new  religion  and  code  of  morals.^  Nothing  need 
to  grow,  it  could  be  manufactured  to  order,  under  the  light  of 
the  natural  reason  of  man.  Natural  religion,  or  the  religion  of 
reason,  took  the  form  of  Deism  in  England.     Natural  rights, 

^  Comte's  Cours  de  Philosophic  Positive,     cf.  Appendix,  note  5. 

*  Bentham  is  a  good  representative  of  this  view.  He  had  a  contempt 
for  the  past  and  was  without  any  historical  sense  in  regard  to  the 
growth  of  institutions.  He  thought  that  he  could  manufacture  codes 
and  constitutions  to  order  under  the  sole  rubric  of  utility.  They  did  not 
need  to  grow,  as  the  common  law  and  the  constitution  of  England  had 
done.  That  was  wasting  time.  It  was  his  ungratified  ambition  to  be 
permitted  to  prepare  a  new  constiution  and  code  of  laws  for  his  own, 
or  some  other  country.  He  might  have  profited  by  Locke's  disastrous 
folly  in  preparing  "the  fundamental  Constitution  of  the  Carolinas,"  a 
century  before. 


i6o  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

supplanted  the  conferred  and  acquired  rights  of  citizenship,  and 
natural  law  ruled  in  the  world  of  nature — the  God  of  Deism 
being  an  Absentee. 

Truths  of  reason  were  just  as  dogmatic,  uncriticised  cate- 
gories of  thought,  as  those  of  the  theological  stage.  The  sub- 
lime, absolute  faith  of  its  exponents  in  the  deliverances  of  reason 
was  scarcely  less  than  that  of  the  supranaturalists  in  revealed 
truths.  They  found  mathematical  proof  of  everything  thus  pos- 
sible. In  the  study  of  nature  they  were  the  founders  of  mathe- 
matical physics.  But  even  here  Comte  places  them  in  the  meta- 
physical stage,  because  they  believed  in  efficient  natural  forces. 
At  bottom,  this  was  identical  with  the  theological  metaphysics. 
Phenomena  of  nature  were  supposed  to  be  the  effects  of  some 
efficient  causes — physical  force,  vital  force,  plastic  force,  tenden- 
cies of  nature,  the  force  of  gravitation,  the  vis  medicatrix  naturcB. 
Thus  they  gave  as  the  efficient  cause  of  water  rising  in  a  pump, 
the  fact  that  nature  abhors  a  vacuum.  Disease  was  as  real  an 
entity  for  them,  as  the  wrath  of  a  god  for  the  theological  dog- 
matists. But  Comte  held  all  efficient  cause  to  be  unreal. 
"What  are  called  causes,"  he  says,  "whether  these  are  first  or 
final  causes,  are  absolutely  inaccessible,  and  the  search  for  them 
is  a  vain  search."  When  Positivism  is  reached,  men  give  up  all 
belief  in  causes  and  attend  only  to  the  relations  of  similarity  and 
succession  of  phenomena. 

Science  is  bidden  to  abandon  all  these  personified  abstrac- 
tions as  being  no  more  real  or  knowable  than  angels  or  demons. 
Comte  banished  all  anthropomorphism  from  science  as  an 
intellectual  sin,  as  science  had  banished  it  from  theology.^ 
Though   Comte's   phenomenalism   and   positivism — practically 

*An  unrighteous  remnant  of  metaphysics  still  lurks  in  marry  scien- 
tific conceptions  The  reality  of  atoms,  forces,  efficient  causes,  laws 
of  nature,  were  held  by  Comte  to  belong  to  the  metaphysical  stage  of 
thought.  Science  should  only  deal  with  phenomena  and  their  suc- 
cession and  coexistence.  "L'Atome  et  la  force !  Voila  L'univers." 
Positivism  stigmatizes  this  as  metaphysics,  little  better  than  Theology. 


THE  HISTORICAL  METHOD  i6i 

identical  with  that  of  Neo-Kantians — is  rapidly  becoming  the 
regnant  view  in  science,  it  would  not  be  correct  to  characterize 
the  nineteenth  century  by  the  term  Positivism.  It  would  be 
better  to  characterize  it  as  "the  historical  age"  and  reserve  the 
term  Positivism  for  the  twentieth  century. 

The  method  of  the  nineteenth  century  has  been  the  genetic 
one — an  attempt  to  understand  everything,  especially  every  in- 
stitution, by  a  patient  regressive  study  of  its  antecedent  forms 
and  environment.  Springing  as  it  did  from  romanticism  in 
literature,  and  idealism  in  philosophy,  the  historical  method,  in 
its  earliest  stages,  directly  contravened  positivism  by  its  use  of 
both  efficient  and  final  causes.  It  dealt  primarily  with  human 
interests  and  human  institutions.  It  had  the  humanitarian  heart 
and  humanitarian  ideals.  All  history  showed  the  efficient  forces 
leading  man  upwards  towards  his  ideals.  It  sought  for  the 
essence  of  humanity  in  the  lower  stages  of  these  institutions,  and 
then  traced  this  essence  manifesting  itself  in  freer  and  loftier 
forms.  History  was  the  biography  of  humanity,  and  its  story 
always  had  significance  and  worth.  The  human  reason  too  had 
its  biography.  But  this  was  always  the  history  of  the  implicit 
reason  coming  to  be  more  explicit,  both  on  its  speculative  and 
practical  side,  through  the  hard  fought  struggles  to  attain  its 
majority.  It  was  not  looked  upon  as  a  miraculous  birth  from 
something  lower  and  heterogeneous,  but  as  a  process  of  self- 
development.  Thus  this  method  still  kept  the  metaphysical  ele- 
ments of  potentialities,  causes,  tendencies  of  nature,  of  the 
eighteenth  century  view.  But  it  put  these  in  human  nature, 
rather  than  in  physical  nature,  as  that  had  done.  It  found,  the 
efficient  cause  of  any  state  or  epoch  or  institution,  to  be  the 
genius  of  its  people,  the  spirit  of  the  times,  the  essence  of  the 
institution — potent  potentialities  that  were  self-developing 
towards  their  goals.  The  theme  was  that  of  ideal  men  strug- 
gling through  history  towards  self-realization.  Its  tone  was 
thoroughly  idealistic  and  optimistic.  Great  and  inspiring  was 
the  work  done  in  this  its  pristine  form  and  vigor.     Nothing 

iz 


i62  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

human  was  alien  to  it,  and  so  the  workers  probed  into  all  pos- 
sible archaeological  material — back  to  the  time  "when  Adam 
delved  and  Eve  span,"  of  every  age  and  country  and  institu- 
tion. Its  vast  scholarly  labors  were  animated  by  a  love  of  the 
truly  human,  in  however  lowly  form  it  might  be  found.  It 
idealized  all  past  forms. 

But  the  spirit  of  Positivism  in  physical  science  did  not  fail 
to  find  entrance  into  the  historical  school.  This  change  was 
aided  by  that  of  its  own  inner  dialectic.  It  found  any  form  of 
human  institutions  to  be  relative  to  its  own  time  and  circum- 
stances. Circumstances  began  to  overshadow  the  human  ele- 
ment— the  spirit  of  the  people,  the  genius  of  institutions — 
which  had  at  first  functioned  in  bringing  the  on-sweeping  tide 
of  development.  The  insular  empiricism  of  England  filtered 
into  !he  pores  of  German  idealism.  This  found  the  ground  pre- 
pared for  it  in  Kant's  First  Critique,  and  invited  all  to  go  back 
from  the  Kant  of  the  Second  and  Third  Critiques  to  the  Kant 
of  the  First  Critique,  and  finally  to  Comte's  Positivism,  thus 
effectually  banishing  metaphysics  in  their  study  both  of  man  and 
nature. 

"Apostles  of  Circumstance"  arose  in  their  own  midst.  The 
environment,  not  the  spirit  of  a  people,  caused  the  develop- 
ment of  language,  morals  and  institutions.  Neither  conscious 
nor  unconscious  purpose  is  to  be  seen  throughout  the  trans- 
formation. "Qimate,  food,  soil  and  the  general  aspect  of 
nature"^  are  the  four  circumstances  that  Buckle  gives  as  the 
efficient  causes  of  the  civilization  of  England.  Spencer  does 
not  get  beyond  the  category  of  circumstances.  The  vital  seed, 
germ,  essence,  spirit  is  finally  smothered  by  the  ever  increasing 
husk  of  circumstance  (environment).  Everything  is  reduced 
to  circumstances — standing  round  what  but  other  circumstance ! 
Great  verily  is  circumstance !  It  no  longer  takes  a  man,  much 
less  a  God,  to  beget  a  man  and  his  civilizing,  moralizing  institu- 
tions. The  teleological  judgment  was  banished,  while  the  rem- 
*  Buckle's  History  of  Civilisation  in  England,  H,  Chap.  II. 


THE  HISTORICAL  METHOD  163 

nant  of  the  metaphysical  stage  of  science  was  kept  in  the  form 
of  the  causal  judgment.  Circumstances  caused  the  changes. 
But  Positivism  had  ruled  causality  out,  as  a  remnant  of  the  met- 
aphysical stage  of  thought.  Science  had  become  positive ;  had 
banished  the  reified  abstraction  of  causality  and  decided  to  hold 
to  the  facts — phenomena  and  their  sequences.  Thus  logically, 
no  universal  judgments  are  possible.  Everything  is  relative, 
nothing  causal.  That  is  the  hereditas  damnosa  of  theology  and 
rationalism,  which  has  finally  been  foresworn  by  the  leaders  in 
science. 

So  too  in  history,  it  was  found,  that  every  form  of  every  in- 
stitution was  merely  relative — the  literature  of  England  relative 
to  the  social  environment  (Taine)  as  that  is  relative  to  "food, 
soil,  climate  and  general  aspect  of  nature,"  (Buckle)  as  these 
are  relative  to  geological  changes,  which  are  relative^ — well, 
there  is  a  never-ending  regress  of  circumstances  that  stand 
round  no  beginning  and  are  leading  to  no  end  in  particular.  It 
all  depends  upon  circumstance.  And  finally,  when  relativity 
is  taken  in  earnest,  there  is  no  dependence,  no  causal  depend- 
ence of  any  one  thing  upon  another  and  the  historical  method, 
along  with  the  historical  spirit,  has  given  place  to  Positivism 
even  in  the  humanities.  We  have  now  the  Science  of  History, 
or  scientiHc  history,  which,  like  physical  science,  has  banished 
to  the  theological  limbo,  both  efficient  and  final  causes. 

Man,  the  truly  human,  is  no  longer  in  history,  much  less 
God.  Circumstances,  with  no  other  than  "chronological  se- 
quence and  co-existence,"  well,  the  world  is  full  of  relativities, 
and  it  is  the  duty  of  the  science  of  history  to  invent  economical 
formulae  of  description,  which  are  no  longer  causal  laws,  but 
mental,  conceptual  short-hand  descriptions.  In  history,  and 
especially  in  sociology,  we  have  marvelously  helpful  generaliza- 
tions; intellectual,  conceptual  laws  of  social  statics  that  have 
been  of  the  greatest  practical  service,  and  profound  and  true 
construction  of  laws  of  Dynamic  Sociology  (Ward),  with  all 
the  dynamite  of  casual  efficiency  taken  out  of  them.    Then  we 


i64  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

have  the  Economical  Interpretation  of  History,  where  the  one 
dynamic  circumstance  is  man's  need  and  greed  for  gold  or 
its  goods,  rather  than  for  the  truly  human  good  (Giddings). 
None  can  do  other  than  admire  and  be  thankful  for  the  good 
work  done  by  this  school  of  Positivists  in  Sociology,  But  we 
must  ask  no  questions  as  to  efficient  and  final  causes.  These 
terms,  when  used  from  the  exigencies  of  language  and  of  the 
understanding  of  men,  are  at  best  but  figurative.  We  are  only 
in  the  sphere  of  relativity,  of  the  sequence  and  co-existence  of 
phenomena  in  time.  Time  is  the  one  universal  maw,  in  which 
all  things  rise,  ripen  and  rot — ^all  being  relative  stages  of  rela- 
tivity. The  old  mythology  of  Chronos  devouring  his  off- 
spring is  upon  us.  Why  anything  should  rise  and  ripen  rather 
than  rot,  only  God  wots,  if  God  there  be,  where  there  is  naught 
but  relativity.  This  is  a  question  that  no  scientific  historian  will 
ask,  much  less  deign  to  answer.  It  is  politely  referred  to  theo- 
logians and  philosophers  who  profess  to  know  more  than  the 
phenomenal,  to  those  who 

" — doubt  not,  thro'  the  ages  one  increasing  purpose  runs." 

We  shall  note  this  limitation  of  positivism  in  history  later 
on.  We  shall  ask  whether  it  is  truly  human  not  to  ask  this 
question,  and  whether  the  rise  and  ripening  of  human  institu- 
tions are  explicable  without  a  more  or  less  conscious  appre- 
hension of  purpose — of  the  why  and  whereto  of  humanity's 
struggle  out  of  beast  towards  God-sonship.  But  to  return  to 
the  historical  school,  with  the  historical  sense — for  positivism  in 
history  is  no  longer  "the  historical  school,"  and  we  now  have 
the  Science  of  History. 

The  historical  school  revolutionized  the  abstract  doctrinaire 
view  of  all  human  institutions.  It  studied  their  past  to  under- 
stand and  explain  their  present  forms.  It  could  not  accept 
its  mechanical  conception  of  reason,  and  its  mechanical  ability 
to  manufacture  new  and  true  forms  for  state,  religion,  and  so- 
ciety, without  any  organic  relation  to  past  forms.  Freed  from 
the  cynical  estimate  of  the  past,  from  the  conceited  rationalism 


THE  HISTORICAL  METHOD  165 

of  the  "Age  of  Reason,"  the  Romantic-Idealistic  school  be- 
lieved in  the  dynamics  of  life.  They  believed  not  in  a  dead 
past,  but  in  the  present,  living  only  as  in  vital  continuity  with 
the  past.  The  mood  was  that  of  a  lofty  humanitarianism  as 
opposed  to  the  cynical  utilitarianism  which  said,  let  the  dead 
bury  the  dead,  but  follow  thou  thine  own  reason  and  comfort. 
They  recognized  that  they  were  the  heirs  of  the  ages  past — that 
they  had  entered  into  a  heritage,  won  by  the  toil  and  life-blood 
of  their  ancestors.  They  sought  to  re-discover  and  re-construct 
the  dead  past  of  humanity  and  make  it  a  living  present.  They 
had  no  merely  archaeological  interest.  They  had  a  generic  hu- 
man interest.  The  past  was  their  own  past  and,  as  such,  the 
parent  of  their  own  present.  They  sought  to  honor  their  par- 
ents in  seeking  to  reproduce  a  picture  of  their  life  and  times. 
Even  if  their  ancestors  were  savages,  they  were  noble  savages, 
and  they  sought  for  the  essential  human,  rather  than  for  the 
accidental  brutish,  in  them.  Thus  only  could  they  account  for 
the  humane  and  the  noble  in  their  descendants. 

Humanity  was  one  organic  life,  battling  for  development 
through  the  ages.  They  would  read — re-discover  the  minutest 
circumstances  in  the  life  and  times  of  the  earlier  forms  of  this 
human  process  of  self-realization. 

Boundless  wealth  of  painstaking  scholarship  was  spent  in 
the  drudgery  of  the  details  of  research,  to  trace  the  growth  and 
development  of  present  forms  of  language,  literature,  art  and 
social  institution — all  for  the  love  of  the  truly  human ;  all  for 
the  sake  of  appreciating  the  heritage  of  the  present  from  the 
past. 

In  jurisprudence,  the  historical  school  held  that  law,  like 
the  language  of  a  people,  is  the  result  of  the  genius  of  a  people ; 
the  forms  that  its  life  adopts  for  self-preservation  and  self- 
realization.  All  forms  of  law  are  regarded  with  respect.  Ear- 
lier forms  are  the  parents  of  present  forms.  No  modern  form 
is  absolutely  novel.  To  understand  the  modern  form,  there 
came  the  work  of  historical  or  comparative  jurisprudence. 


i66  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

In  the  study  of  ethics,  sociology,  psychology,  politics;  of 
every  form  in  which  the  human  spirit  has  actualized  itself,  the 
historical  or  genetic  method  was  applied.  Their  past  history 
became  their  biographical  genesis.  They  all,  like  Topsy, 
"growed."  And  the  narration  of  their  changes  is  their  histor- 
ical explanation.  It  is  needless  to  go  into  detail  as  to  how  far 
this  method  invaded  and  transformed  nearly  all  departments  of 
thought,  including  even  that  of  physical  science.  This  has  been 
well  done  by  the  late  Professor  Henry  Sidgwick.^ 

It  is  needless,  too,  to  dwell  upon  the  worth  of  the  work  done 
by  this  method,  in  all  the  fields  where  it  has  been  employed. 
This  has  been  done  so  often  and  so  well  by  its  enthusiastic  ex- 
ponents, that  it  has  become  almost  a  truism  that  this  dominant 
method  has  the  final  word  to  say  on  all  things  that  have  a  his- 
tory. 

In  science,  evolution  is  a  form  of  the  historical  method  ap- 
plied to  nature.  Nothing  new  is  ever  created  in  the  realm  of 
nature,  but  all  things  come  to  be  by  almost  imperceptible 
changes.  And  then,  too,  nothing  is  what  it  is  except  by  means 
of  its  relations  to  other  series  of  changes.  The  whole  point  of 
view  is  that  of  ever-changing  relations,  between  atoms,  forces 
and  things  in  a  universe  of  changing  forces,  so  correlated,  that 
no  one  force  or  thing  is  independent.  That  is,  the  categories 
used  in  describing  the  changes  of  form  in  nature,  are  those  of 
relativity — cause  and  effect,  thing  and  environment,  substance 
and  qualities,  essence  and  phenomena,  potentiality  and  actual- 
ity ;  endless  mediation  through  relations  between  forces  which 
are  only  transient  forms  of  one  force. 

Students  of  human  history  too  often  fall  into  the  use  of 
these  categories  of  physical  science.  This  is  the  vice  of  what  is 
called  scientific  history,  or  the  science  of  history.  It  treats  man 
and  men  as  things,  which  change  and  grow  only  as  they  are 
changed  by  other  things.     Mechanical  necessity  is  the  god 

^Philosophy,  its  Scope  and  Relations,  by  the  late  Professor  Henry 
Sidgwick. 


THE  HISTORICAL  METHOD  167 

which  rules  in  all  the  changing  forms  of  human  creeds  and 
deeds.  It  seeks  to  trace  the  development  of  human  institu- 
tions by  a  study  of  the  external  conditions  of  their  various 
stages  of  change.  It  neglects  the  spiritual  element  that  has 
ever  been  the  life  that  has  reacted  upon  and  modified  the  en- 
vironment. It  neglects  the  power  of  ideals — the  implicit  im- 
pulse towards  fuller  rationality,  immanent  in  all  the  merely  ex- 
ternal changes,  that  changes  them  from  mere  change  to  a  de- 
velopment. 

At  least  this  seems  to  have  become  the  dominant  tendency  of 
the  school.  Properly  speaking  there  are  two  schools  who  use 
the  historical  method:  (i)  The  realistic  and  (2)  the  idealistic, 
or  the  (i)  scientific  and  the  (2)  philosophical  schools. 

Section   i.    The  Scientific   School  of  the  Historical 

Method. 

I.  Let  us  make  a  critical  examination  of  the  limitations  of 
the  empirical  school,  which  drive  us  to  the  philosophical  school 
for  a  more  concrete  view  of  the  how  and  the  why  of  human 
institutions.  To  do  this  we  may  first  give  a  very  brief  state- 
ment of  the  problems  and  methods  of  (a)  Science,  (&)  Philoso- 
phy. 

(a)  The  problem  of  science  is  to  give  a  classified  and  sys- 
tematized short-hand  description  of  all  physical  phenomena — 
that  is,  it  seeks  to  make  generalizations  as  to  the  sequences  and 
relations  between  phenomena,  that  may  be  called  laws  of  nature. 
There  can  be  no  hesitancy  in  the  acceptance  of  the  magnificent 
and  colossal  results  of  science  in  the  fields  of  nature  and  of  his- 
tory. It  is  not  the  methods  and  results  of  science  that  are  criti- 
cised, but  the  metaphysical  theories  of  many  of  its  exponents., 
who  are  loudest  in  their  objurgation  of  metaphysics.  Their 
ontology,  or  doctrine  of  what  is  real,  is  that  atoms,  even  though 
they  bear  the  mark  of  being  "manufactured  articles" ;  that  mo- 
tion, force,  cause,  space  and  time  are  not  only  empirical  but 


i68  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

absolute  realities;  that  laws  of  nature  are  causally  efficient 
workers;  in  a  word  that  their  phenomenal  world  is  the  real 
world,  and  that  their  conceptual  formulas  of  description  are  the 
ultimate  explanation  of  all  concrete  reality. 

Not  only  have  they  misrepresented  science  to  the  popular 
mind,  but  they  are  themselves  deluded  into  the  metaphysical 
belief  in  all  these  anthropomorphic  superstitions  —  veritable 
fetishes.  Those  who  are  easily  the  intellectual  leaders  in  the 
work  of  science  have  discarded  all  this  bad  metaphysics.  They 
may  or  may  not  be  agnostic.  Their  science  as  such,  however, 
has  nothing  to  do  with  agnosticism.  They  frankly  say  that  sci- 
ence has  nothing  to  do  with  atom,  mass,  energy,  laws  of  nature 
as  real  entities.  These  conceptions,  along  with  that  of  evolu- 
tion, are  only  used  as  an  economic,  conceptual  short-hand  for 
resuming,  classifying  and  holding  data  of  phenomenal  experi- 
ence, which  data  are  the  sense-impressions  of  conscious  sub- 
jects.  These  data  they  construct  by  means  of  the  conceptual 
short-hand,  into  a  systematic  and  useful  description  of  them. 

Thus  they  say  that  science  has  nothing  to  do  with  entities  or 
with  efficient  causes  any  more  than  with  final  causes ;  that  what 
we  call  physical  forces  are  simply  symbols,  like  x,  y,  z,  which 
help  us  to  construct  relations  between  the  data  of  the  sense-per- 
ceptions— of  a  percipient.  "There  are  no  causes  and  effects  in 
nature.  Nature  simply  is  our  sensations.  Cause  and  eflfect 
are  a  mental  short-hand  for  reproducing  the  facts."  "Causes 
and  effects,  therefore,  are  things  of  thought,  having  an  eco- 
nomical office."^  They  have  generally  come  to  accept  John 
Stuart  Mill's  definition  of  matter  as  a  "permanent  possibility  of 
sensation" — in  a  percipient,  and  atoms  as  thought  symbols,  like 
X  and  y,  useful  working  tools  in  analysis  and  classification. 
Atoms  are  not  some  real  things  in  space.  They  are  supersensu- 
ous,  and  have  no  real  existence  apart  from  man's  conceptive 
faculty.  The  determining  compulsion  or  necessity  of  laws  of 
nature  is  only  a  logical  necessity — one  of  consistency  of  our 

*  Ci  Mach's  Science  of  Mechanics,  pp.  483-485. 


THE  HISTORICAL  METHOD  169 

conceptual  language.  In  fine,  they  have  purged  such  terms  as 
cause,  energy,  force,  and  attraction  of  the  superstitious  animism 
still  put  into  them  by  the  metaphysical  scientists.  Idolaters  of 
reified  abstractions,  such  exponents  of  science,  who  are  neither 
few  nor  insignificant,  are  accountable  for  much  of  the  poor  and 
anti-theistic  metaphysics  of  the  day.  They  need  to  go  to  school 
to  the  others  who  have  done  much  of  the  higher  work  of  sci- 
ence. These  latter,  while  using  the  same  terminology  and  insist- 
ing upon  the  application  of  the  mechanical  view  to  all  phases  of 
sensuous  reality,  have  declined  to  reify  this  terminology  and 
theory,  and  thus  to  recrudesce  the  superstitions  of  animism. 
They  affirm  that  science  is  only  a  descriptive,  and  not  a  causal 
explanation,  and  that  its  work  is  that  inventing  short-hand 
economical  formulae  for  the  description  of  the  course  of  events.^ 
That  is,  they  call  modern  science  and  history  back  to  Positivism 
as  a  method,  not  as  a  metaphysic. 

Science  is  an  analysis  of  experience  to  discover  sequences 
and  system  in  all  sensuous  phenomena.  But  it  is  a  higher  sort 
of  knowledge  than  that  of  mere  sense  perception,  which  gives  a 
collection  of  things  and  events.  Science  seeks  the  relations  be- 
tween all  things.  It  finds  things,  indeed,  to  be  really  constituted 
by  relations.  Nothing  in  the  world  is  single.  A  depends  upon  B. 
Every  thing  depends  upon  other  things.  There  are  no  self-sub- 
sisting, independent  individual  things.  Every  thing  is  only  phe- 
nomenal— a  passing  form  of  change  of  relations  or  a  transient 
form  of  sensuous  phenomena.  Science  seeks  the  laws  of  these 
changes — the  universal  throbbing  through  the  particulars  and 
constitutive  of  them,  being  in  this  way  a  return  to  scholastic 
realism.  However,  this  conception  of  the  laws  of  nature  being 
real  forces,  and  doing  real  things,  is  not  held  by  the  chiefs  of 
science.  It  is  a  legacy  from  the  metaphysical  age  bequeathed 
to  the  popular  mind,  and  to  the  semi-popular  mind  of  a  large 
number  of  scientific  men.  It  is  still  often  heard  said  that  the 
laws  of  nature  do  so  and  so.     But  laws  of  nature  are,  for  ad- 

^  Cf.  Karl  Pearson's  Grammar  of  Science. 


170  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

vanced  scientific  thought,  simply  brief,  short-hand  descriptions 
of  large  ranges  of  sequences  of  our  sense-impressions.  Gravi- 
tation does  not  attract  one  mass  to  another.  Gravitation  is  not 
an  actual  force.  The  law  of  gravitation  is  an  hypothetical  re- 
lation that  best  describes  a  number  of  changes.^ 

Science  is  much  more  than  "organized  common  sense." 
Science  verily  transforms  the  world  of  perception,  as  any  text- 
book on  physics  will  show.  Things  are  reduced  to  quantities  of 
forces  and  relations,  so  that  the  water  known  by  the  chemist — 
H2O — is  no  longer  the  water  as  known  by  perception.  The 
chemist's  analysis  of  it  must  seem  to  be  a  fiction  to  common 
sense,  unless  it  accepts  the  chemist's  knowledge  on  mere  au- 
thority. 

Science  does  its  work  with  certain  principles  of  knowledge. 
It  is  dogmatic  in  its  use  of  these  categories,  and  therefore  has 
no  true  valuation  of  them.  There  is,  however,  one  of  its  chief 
categories  that  has  been  subjected  to  such  criticism  as  to  eviscer- 
ate it  of  all  its  primitive  significance — that  is,  the  category  of 
causality.  Modern  science  at  first  used  this  conception  as  that 
of  a  real  force  doing  something,  causing  the  various  forms  of 
change.  But  cause  is  no  longer  conceived  as  a  separate  thing 
acting  upon  or  producing  another  passive  thing  called  effect. 
The  dialectic  forced  this  conception  into  that  of  reciprocity. 
The  cause  cannot  be  a  cause  without  an  effect.  But  the  cause 
thus  depends  upon  the  effect,  which  thus  becomes  the  cause  of 
the  cause  as  well  as  its  effect.  Then  the  idea  of  real  efficiency  in 
cause  was  easily  dispelled.  Thus  A'^  is  the  cause  of  O.  But  N 
itself  is  only  an  effect  of  M  and  that  of  L  and  so  on  not  only 
through  the  alphabet,  but  throughout  all  the  changes  of  time. 
Nowheres  is  anything  truly  causal  to  be  found.  Again,  scien- 
tific men  found  that  this  regress  ad  inHnitum  led  logically  to  a 
First  and  real  cause,  so  long  as  cause  was  conceived  on  the  analo- 
gy of  will.  But  to-day  that  ghost  of  the  old  spiritualism  has 
been  banished  from  Science,  and  we  have  the  harmless  but  help- 
*  Karl  Pearson's  Grammar  of  Science,  p.  86. 


THE  HISTORICAL  METHOD  171 

ful  conception  of  cause  as  the  uniform  antecedence  of  one  event 
in  relation  to  another.  The  same  evisceration  of  the  conception 
of  force  has  also  been  made,  taking  all  force  out  of  it.  So  also 
laws  of  nature  are  only  short-hand  descriptive  formula  for  hold- 
ing together,  in  thought,  a  lot  of  sense  impressions.  Science 
has  purged  its  categories  of  their  earlier  anthropomorphism. 
Kant,  Comte  and  Mill  differ  but  little  in  their  eviscerating  caus- 
ality of  all  causal  efficiency.  It  becomes  simply  the  best  work- 
ing formula  of  systematization  of  changes.* 

As  Bentham  said  the  word  "ought,"  ought  to  be  banished 
from  ethics,  so  they  say  that  causal  efficiency  ought  to  be 
banished  from  the  scientific  conception  of  causality.  Cause 
and  effect  are  no  longer  considered  as  distinct  things,  but  merely 
as  the  earlier  and  later  stages  in  a  continuous  process.  Science 
has  not  to  discover  that  one  thing  causes  another.  There  is  no 
one  and  another — with  intervals  or  break  of  space  and  time  be- 
tween. All  is  motion,  process  Travra  pet.  The  stream  glides 
and  forever  glides,  and  science  seeks  only  to  discover  general 
formula  of  description  of  this  gliding  process.  Science  thus 
becomes  only  the  highest  intellectual  form  of  description.  The 
earlier  conceptions  of  laws  of  nature,  efficient  forces  and  phys- 
ical necessity  have  passed  away,  and  we  have  only  uniformities 
in  nature  as  our  best  descriptive  formula.  The  best  type  of  sci- 
entific explanation,  is  that  of  mathematical  physics,  or  me- 

^  Professor  Ernst  Mach  was  one  of  the  earliest  of  scientists  to  pro- 
pound this  view  of  the  mechanical  theory  minus  the  mythology  which  is 
held  by  many  physicists.  Mach  considers  all  the  conceptions  of  matter, 
force,  cause,  atoms,  mass  as  having  a  merely  economical  office — as  good 
intellectual  machinery  for  a  useful  representation  of  an  abstract  phase  of 
the  universe,  but  in  no  way  real  (Cf.  Mach's  The  Science  of  Mechanics, 
Chaps.  IV,  V  and  Appendix).  In  the  preface  to  the  third  edition  of  this 
work  he  refers  to  Karl  Pearson's  Grammar  of  Science  as  representing 
essentially  similar  views,  banishing  metaphysics  from  the  concepts  of 
mechanics,  which  are  never  perceptions  or  any  part  of  sensuous  reality. 
(Cf.  et.  Ward's  Naturalism  and  Agnosticism  for  application  of  this  view 
of  the  mechanical  theory,  against  mechanical  metaphysics.) 


172  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

chanics.  Hence  the  mechanical  view  of  the  world  that  science 
aims  at  in  its  descriptions. 

Laplace's  Mechanique  Celeste  was  such  a  description  of  the 
starry  worlds  above,  that  there  was  no  need  of  the  hypothesis  of 
a  God.  But  to-day  the  bad  metaphysics  of  the  earlier  form  of 
mechanics,  which  caused  it  to  be  a  veritable  nightmare  to  the 
moral  nature  of  man,  is  passing  away.*  It  is  now  recognized 
that  the  materialism  of  earlier  science  was  only  metaphysics. 
Matter,  atoms,  laws,  causes  are  all  now  emptied  of  the  meta- 
physics which  made  them  so  obnoxious  to  the  human  spirit. 
They  are  all  merely  economic,  conceptual  forms  that  science 
uses  for  symbolical  description.  Matter  is  non-matter  in 
motion.  Atoms,  ether-squirts,  vortex-rings,  mass-points,  elec- 
trons and  ions  all  mental  conceptions;  mathematical  ideals 
for  a  mechanical  description  of  the  routine  of  sense  impressions, 
and  not  themselves  sense-impressions,  i.  e.,  not  sensuous  realities 
for  science.  At  first  they  were  fetishes,  now  they  are 
acknowledged  to  be  only  the  most  convenient  and  efficient 
fictions. 

The  mechanical  theory  of  the  physical  universe,  emptied  of 
its  metaphysics,  is  undoubtedly  a  most  useful  theory,  for  a  de- 
scription of  one  phase  of  reality.  There  are  valid  reasons  for 
pressing  its  use  into  biology  and  all  forms  of  human  history. 
Only  let  its  limitations  be  recognized  and  then,  within  its  sphere, 
scientists  can  say  "so  much  mechanics,  so  much  knowledge  and 
so  much  pre-diction."  Emptied  of  its  metaphysics,  as  it  now  is, 
by  men  of  science  who  think — as  Ostwald,  Mach,  Kirchhoff, 
Kelvin,  Heimholtz,  It  is  emptied  of  its  horror  to  the  human 
spirit.  It  is  a  useful  artificial,  conceptual  contrivance  for  a 
practical  purpose.  It  is  so  much  knowledge,  but  only  of  a  cer- 
tain kind,  under  presuppositions  and  categories  which  are 
utterly  inadequate  to  describe  the  full,  concrete  reality  of  the 
universe.     For  the  universe  is  not  a  mere  quantity,  and  wher- 

*  Cf.  Appendix,  Note  4  for  quotation  from  Romanes  expressing  this 
eflfect. 


THE  HISTORICAL  METHOD  173 

ever  we  pass  out  of  the  quantitative  view  of  reality,  we  pass 
beyond  the  limits  of  mechanism.  At  least  mechanism  becomes 
subordinate  to  the  categories  of  life,  teleology,  and  ultimately, 
to  that  of  self-consciousness. 

(6)  But  with  this  we  pass  to  Philosophy  as  a  form  of  know- 
ing reality  that  transcends  that  of  science,  as  science  does  of 
that  of  naive  common  sense.  Here  we  must  insist  that  it  is 
not  another  world  that  is  known,  but  it  is  the  same  experience 
that  is  known  in  a  higher  form.  We  cannot  accept  the  "divide 
and  rule"  offer  of  science,  when  she  offers  us  the  unknowable 
and  keeps  the  knowable,  as  she  means  when  she  says  "give 
us  the  relative  and  phenomenal  sense  world  and  you  may  have 
the  absolute,  noumenal  world."  Philosophy  is  not  the  knowl- 
edge of  some  special  province  of  experience,  but  a  special  kind 
of  knowledge  of  all  experience,  as  a  totality  or  an  organic  sys- 
tem. 

The  problem  of  philosophy  is  the  comprehension  of  con- 
crete experience,  as  science  is  that  of  an  abstract  phase  of  it. 
That  is,  its  problem  is  the  ultimate  nature  of  reality,  in  the 
duality  of  all  experience.  This  duality  is  that  of  subject  and 
object,  of  knower  and  known.  It  may  begin  with  epistemology 
— the  theory  of  knowing,  or  a  criticism  and  organization  of  the 
various  concepts  or  categories  used  in  knowing.  But  it  goes 
on  to  ontology,  or  the  science  of  real  being  as  known  most 
truly  by  the  highest  category.  It  shows  the  implicit  contradic- 
tions of  the  lower  categories  used  by  science,  criticising  them- 
selves into  categories  of  real  causality,  real  independence  or 
self-relation,  teleology,  life,  volitional  mind,  or  absolute  Self- 
conscious  Personality,  in  the  light  of  which  all  lower  forms  of 
knowing  are  to  be  re-interpreted.  It  is,  I  have  said,  an  at- 
tempted knowledge  of  concrete  experience.  This  concrete  ex- 
perience includes  both  subject  and  object,  knower  and  known  as 
indissoluble  elements  of  experience.  Science  abstracts  the  ob- 
jects from  this  concrete  experience,  and  treats  the  physical 


174  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

world  as  an  independent  form  of  existence.     It  forgets  that 
nothing  external  exists  except  "plus  me," — plus  the  knower. 

In  concrete  experience  the  known  cannot  be  separated  from 
the  knower,  except  by  an  abstraction,  and  that  made  by  a  con- 
scious mind.  The  phenomenal  world  is  that  which  appears  to 
mind,  or  is  a  manifestation  of  self-consciousness.  The  object, 
the  known,  the  external  world  apart  from  the  knower,  is  not  the 
real.  The  world  minus  the  knower  is  an  abstraction,  and 
science  of  this  abstraction  is  abstract  science.  If  the  real  were 
only  that  which  exists  in  space,  and  both  the  real  and  space 
existed  independently  of  the  knower,  then  science  might  claim  to 
know  the  real.  Even  that  pronounced  empiricist,  the  late  Pro- 
fessor Bain,  says:  "We  are  incapable  of  discussing  the  ex- 
istence of  an  independent  material  world ;  the  very  act  is  a 
contradiction.  We  can  only  speak  of  a  world  presented  to  our 
minds."  Now  philosophy  contends  against  the  leaving  of  this 
"plus  me"  factor,  this  mental  coefficient,  out  of  the  total  expe- 
rience to  be  known.  And  it  contends  still  more  strongly  against 
the  attempt  to  evolve  this  "plus  me"  element  out  of  the  abstract 
external  world — the  conscious  out  of  the  unconscious,  or  to  treat 
it  as  mere  epiphenomenon  or  by-product,  a  quantite  neglige- 
able. 

"Am  I  the  abandoned  orphan  of  blind  chance 
Dropped  by  wild  atoms  in  disordered  dance, 
Or,  from  an  endless  chain  of  causes  wrought, 
And  of  unthinking  substance,  bom  with  thought?" 

And  yet  that  is  all  that  rigid  metaphysical  science  can  make 
of  man— ^a  mere  part  of  an  independent  physical  universe — 
though,  on  its  own  categories  and  by  its  own  confession,  it 
can  never  know  anything  except  the  causally  dependent  and  can 
never,  by  its  regress  ad  infinitum,  get  a  universe.  Hence,  it 
should  never  dare  formulate  universal  and  invariable  laws  of 
uniformities.  Relativity,  within  the  realm  of  abstraction  from 
concrete  experience,  is  the  self-imposed  limitation  of  scien- 
tific knowledge. 


THE  HISTORICAL  METHOD  175 

Rigid  science,  as  a  knowledge  of  this  phenomenal  abstrac- 
tion, can  know  nothing  of  the  moral.  The  "ought  to  be"  is  not 
a  space  occupying  thing  and  so  cannot  be  known.  Will  and 
motive,  life  and  development,  thought  and  self-activity  are  not 
sensuous  phenomena  and  so  cannot  be  known  by  science  except 
as  epiphenomena,  parallel  to,  but  with  no  causal  connection 
with,  physical  processes,  which  are  all  that  science  proposes  to 
know. 

Soul  is  thus  bowed  out  of  man,  as  by  La  Mettrie  in  his 
L'Homme  Machine.  Thought  is  pitched  out  of  the  brain,  as 
one  of  its  secretions,  by  Buchner  in  his  coarse  way  of  stating 
the  more  refined  views  of  some  forms  of  the  new  psychology. 
Buchner  said:  "Ohne  Phosphor  kein  Gedanke."  Cabanis 
said:  "Religion  is  the  product  of  the  smaller  intestines." 
Rigid  science  does  not  cover  concrete  experience  and  therefore 
does  not  know  real  reality.  Philosophy  claims  to  approxi- 
mate towards  a  comprehension  of  the  whole  of  experience  as 
an  organic  system,  and  then  of  the  parts  of  experience,  not  in 
abstraction  from,  but  as  organic  members  of  this  organic  sys- 
tem. Its  method  is  that  of  the  analysis  of  any  part  of  experi- 
ence, "flower  in  the  crannied  wall,"  or  a  Jesus  on  the  cross,  to 
see  what  the  "it  is"  implies,  in  order  to  be  what  it  is.  Then  it 
follows  these  necessary  implications  until  it  comes  to  the  ex- 
plicit totality  or  ultimate  ground,  of  all  these  existences — out  of 
which  they  arise,  and  in  which  they  "live  and  move  and  have 
their  being."  This  is  not  a  mere  empirical  analysis  of  sensuous 
experience.  For  this  is  not,  as  Kant,  in  spite  of  his  First 
Critique,  showed  once  for  all,  the  whole  of  experience.  It  is 
at  best  the  woof,  of  which  the  eternal  and  necessary  warp  is 
non-sensuous.  Time  and  space,  quantity,  causality,  life,  devel- 
opment, mind  are  the  non-sensuous  elements  of  concrete  ex- 
perience. 

Philosophy  aims  at  reaching  the  crowning  and  begetting 
summit  of  these  categories  by  an  analysis  of  experience,  and 
then  seeks  to  return  synthetically  upon  all  the  abstract  phases 


ty6  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

of  knowledge,  and  reinterpret  them  in  the  light  of  the  organic 
system  of  which  they  are  members.  Every  finite  thing,  every 
abstraction  is  imperfect.  Only  in  the  light  of  the  perfect  can 
their  degree  of  reality  be  estimated.  Thus  philosophy  deals 
with  the  same  world,  the  same  experience  that  is  the  subject 
series  of  things ;  the  second  a  connection  of  all  physical  things, 
abstracted  from  mind  or  consciousness,  while  the  third  gives  us 
the  infinite  connectedness  of  concrete  experience  as  an  organic 
system  of  reality — in  which  there  are  no  merely  mechanical 
parts,  but  rather  organic  members.  The  way  up  from  the 
"flower  in  the  crannied  wall,"  must  reach  its  absolute  limit — 
God,  ere  the  way  downward  can  return  and  really  know  the 
flower  as  it  is, — its  grade  of  reality  as  an  organic  phase  of 
absolute  reality.  That  is,  philosophy  comes  to  criticise  the 
hypostatized  abstractions  of  science,  as  science  does  those  of 
common  sense.  And  it  does  this  by  the  reverse  method  of 
science  as  stated  by  Spencer:  ''We  must  interpret  the  more 
developed  by  the  less  developed."^  Philosophy  seeks  to  inter- 
pret the  lower  by  the  higher,  by  virtue  of  which  alone,  as  its 
teleological  cause,  the  lower  has  the  grade  of  reality  is  now  has 
and  has  developed  from  a  still  lower  form. 

Evolution 

To  return  to  the  historical  method,  so  far  as  that  works 
with  the  concepts  of  physical  science,  we  find  that  its  central 
concept  is  that  of  development  or  evolution.  We  have  found 
that  under  the  conceptions  of  mechanism,  there  is  no  place  for 
design  for  spontaneous  or  organic  activity.  We  have  found  the 
tendency  to  press  this  method  into  the  study  of  biology,  physi- 
ology and  all  the  forms  of  human  institutions.  We  merely  add 
that  this  conception  of  "so  much  mechanism,  so  much  science" 
is  too  often  a  regnant  conception  with  those  who  exploit  the 
historical  method.     It  will  be  well,  then,  to  examine  the  theory 

*  Herbert  Spencer,  Data  of  Ethics,  Chap.  I.  Sec.  2. 


THE  HISTORICAL  METHOD  177- 

of  Mechanical  Evolution.  There  is  evolution  and  evolution. 
We  need  not  treat  of  the  popular  conception  of  evolution,  nor 
of  the  philosophical  form  of  the  evolutionary  view  of  the  uni- 
verse— for  which  all  need  go  back  to  Aristotle.  Nor  need  we 
refer  to  religious  conceptions  of  development — to  such  as  that 
of  Drummond's  attempt  to  apply  the  language  and  conceptions 
of  science  to  religious  experience.  In  a  popular  way  we  all 
believe  in  development.  Men  have  always  believed  in  some  sort 
of  a  development.  Aristotle's  most  comprehensive  and  defi- 
nitely concrete  doctrine  of  development  has  had  its  disciples  in 
all  ages. 

But  speaking  of  the  strict  scientific  theory  of  development, 
we  may  say  that  it  often  passes  beyond  its  legitimate  function 
of  a  piece  of  intellectual  machinery  for  classification  of  facts 
and  their  temporal  sequences  of  its  abstract  world.  When  it 
is  taken  beyond  this,  as  too  often  it  is  by  the  rank  and  file  of 
scientists,  it  becomes  metaphysical.  It  is  propounded  as  a 
causal  explanation  of  the  whole  concrete  experience ;  some- 
times as  an  actually  efficient  law  or  real  force  that  holds  every- 
thing within  its  mechanical  grip.  Thus  hypostatizing  its  ab- 
stract conceptions  of  an  abstract  phase  of  the  world,  it  makes 
gods  many,  or  one  almighty  force,  and  gives  every  possible 
reason  for  protest  against  the  dead  mechanism  it  offers  us  as 
the  actual,  concrete  world. 

The  theist  may  accept  the  most  rigidly  mechanical  view  of 
evolution  as  to  the  chronological  sequences  of  all  changes,  even 
in  the  organic  world  of  life  and  mind  and  its  institutions.  But 
this  theory,  when  offered  as  a  full  and  final  explanation  of  con- 
crete reality,  is  rightly  abhorrent  to  all  who  hold  to  the  dis- 
tinctively human  and  spiritual  in  experience. 

But  Mach,  and  a  host  of  the  leaders  of  science,  are  pro- 
testing against  this  reification  of  mere  mental  machinery,  of 
mathematical  models.  As  Mach  says:  "Purely  mechanical 
phenomena  do  not  exist.  .  .  .  They  are  abstractions."  "The 
mechanical  theory  of  nature  is  an  artificial  conception.    The 

12 


178  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

science  of  mechanics  does  not  comprise  the  foundations,  no, 
nor  even  a  part  of  the  world,  but  only  an  aspect  of  it."^  All  its 
concepts,  from  that  of  the  unseen  atom  and  gemmule  up  to 
that  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest,  are  held  as  purely  mental 
conceptions  for  facilitating  a  short-hand  resume  or  descrip- 
tion of  an  abstract  aspect  of  concrete  reality.  And  the  mechan- 
ical mythology  is  classed  with  animistic  religions  as  fantastic 
exaggerations  of  an  incomplete  perception.^  As  a  metaphys- 
ical theory,  held  by  the  rank  and  file  of  scientific  men,  mechan- 
ical evolution  is  a  form  of  impersonal  pantheism. 

Confined  to  its  legitimate  role,  all  must  recognize  its  im- 
mense service  in  the  cause  of  science.  We  are  all  evolutionists, 
in  the  strict  scientific  sense  of  the  term.  We  believe  that  even 
its  mechanical  form  should  impose  itself  upon  all  life  and  his- 
tory— or  rather  upon  an  abstract  phase  of  all  life  and  history. 
The  more  its  formula  can  cover  the  more  we  have  of  that  sort 
of  knowledge.  It  is  not  against  mechanical  evolution  as  such 
that  protests,  moral  and  intellectual,  should  be  made.  It  is  only 
when  the  formulae  of  a  mechanical  evolution  are  held  to  give 
us  the  full  explanation  of  any  organic  development,  that  intel- 
lectual criticism  of  its  concepts  is  in  order.  Let  it  be  limited 
to  merely  mechanical  conceptions. 

Then  we  must  see  that  pure  mechanism  can  only  cover  the 
quantitative  aspects  of  reality.  But  when  we  come  to  organic 
aspects  we  find  qualitative  changes ;  something  new  being  born 
out  of  the  old,  for  which  there  are  no  mechanical  equivalents. 
We  must  pass  out  of  identity  to  difference  and  yet  keep  a  con- 
tinuity in  the  higher  or  more  complex  forms.  That  is,  we  have 
more  than  mere  quantitative  changes,  or  else  we  have  no  real 
development.  Development  implies  progress,  and  progress 
implies  change  towards  an  end.  Obnoxious  as  the  term  is  to 
scientific  men,  we  must  insist  that  not  a  step  forward  can  be 
taken  without  the  use  of  teleology  or  final  cause,  i.  e.,  the  end 

*  Cf,  Mach's  Science  of  Mechanics,  Chap.  IV,  iv. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  464. 


THE  HISTORICAL  METHOD  179 

towards  which  things  are  developing.  Without  this  concep- 
tion of  an  end  there  can  be  nothing  but  change.  Without  a 
goal,  there  can  be  no  progress.  And  this  end,  or  goal  or  final 
cause  is  not  a  present  sensuous  thing. 

Topsy  grows — becomes  more  of  a  girl  than  she  was  when 
in  the  cradle.  For  mechanical  evolution  the  problem  is  how 
has  Topsy  now  become  greater  than  Topsy  then.  The  solu- 
tion is  merely  a  question  of  addition.  Topsy  now==  Topsy  then 
-{-environment.  Or  "consider  the  lillies  of  the  field,  how  they 
grow."  Answer,  a  bulb  and  environment.  The  difference 
then  comes  from  a  quantitative  external  environment.  The 
bigger,  brawnier,  brainier  Topsy  is  simply  a  novel,  fortuitous 
readjustment  of  previous  quantitative  elements — an  idiosyn- 
crasy, i.  e.,  a  peculiar  mingling  of  already  existing  elements. 
For  science  demands  the  metaphysical  faith  that  there  can 
never  be  any  increase  or  diminution  of  the  quantity  of  matter. 
Surely,  if  Topsy's  brain  ever  became  adequate  to  understand 
the  rigid  scientific  account  of  her  growth,  she  would  exclaim : 

"Am  I  th'  abandoned  orphan  of  blind  chance 
Dropped  by  wild  atoms  in  disordered  dance?" 

And  yet,  that  is  just  the  solution,  in  rigid  terms,  given  by 
mechanical  evolution  of  the  growth  of  Topsy,  and  of  every 
other  child  of  man.  Even  the  reason  used  by  the  best  experts 
in  this  line  is  accounted  for  in  the  same  mechanical  way.  And 
then,  too,  the  doctrine  of  evolution  is  itself  a  mechanical  evolu- 
tion. 

Teleology  is  scorned  in  science,  and  yet  without  teleology 
there  can  be  no  development.  What  is  more,  these  exponents 
of  evolution  cannot  describe  its  processes  without  using  teleo- 
logical  terminology.  Of  this  Darwin  himself  is  a  conspicuous 
example.  And  Kant,  in  his  Third  Critique,  finds  that  it  is  nec- 
essary, in  organic  matter,  to  use  teleology,  but  only  as  a  heuris- 
tic principle;  serviceable  as  an  inventive  analogy,  but  not  of 
constituent  validity.  The  only  design  is  the  hypothesis  in  the 
mind  of  the  investigator,  which  itself  was  undesigned. 


i8o  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

Ever  since  final  causes  were  damned  by  Bacon  with  the 
phrase,  "barren  vestals,"  they  have  remained  eliminated  from 
the  methods  of  science.  In  fact,  whenever  we  find  teleological 
terminology  used  in  science,  we  are  warned  that,  though  really 
inconsistent  and  unmeaning,  it  is  a  useful  and  necessary  mode 
of  expression — not  to  be  taken  seriously.  A  chance  throw  of 
the  twenty-four  letters  of  the  alphabet,  after  millions  upon  mil- 
lions of  throws,  produced  the  Iliad,  and  the  theory  of  evolution. 
Is  this  a  merely  frivolous  and  popular  statement  of  an  objection 
to  the  mechanical  theory,  or  is  it  not  absolutely  a  propos? 
Surely  "the  air  of  finality"  which  the  exponents  of  the  me- 
chanical theory  assume  in  their  theory  needs  airing,  for  it  is 
not  a  barren  vestal,  but  the  mother  of  absolute  nihilism  as  re- 
gards all  of  humanity's  cherished  ideals. 

Let  the  cold  facts  of  the  rigidly  scientific  doctrine  of  evolu- 
tion be  boldly  and  baldly  stated,  purged  of  all  anthropomorphic 
conceptions  of  design,  of  all  ethical  and  theological  embellish- 
ments ;  let  it  stand  out  as  a  theory  which  has  "escorted  the  Cre- 
ator to  the  extreme  frontier  of  the  universe,  with  many  expres- 
sions of  consideration,  and  returned  without  Him;"  let  it  be 
known  in  its  estimate  of  man's  here  and  hereafter  and  as  un- 
worthing  all  the  spiritual  values  of  humanity ;  let  it  not  be  popu- 
larized with  meretricious  ornament,  but  let  its  revolutionary  ef- 
fect upon  all  that  moral  and  religious  men  hold  dear — then,  I 
cannot  see  why  there  should  be  such  suicidal  haste  to  avow 
one's  self  to  be  an  evolutionist,  on  the  part  of  those  who  believe 
in  God,  freedom  and  immortality.  A  bullet  in  the  brain,  the 
first  tooth  pain  or  first  heart  strain  would  seem  to  be  the  most 
natural  consequence  of  holding  the  mechanical  doctrine  of  evo- 
lution as  the  whole  truth  of  concrete  experience. 

But  this  is  pragmatic.  As  we  are  not  following  our  hearts 
chiefly,  we  return  to  the  logic  of  the  theory. 

We  return  again  to  our  assertion  that  with  mere  mechanism 
there  can  be  progress  towards  a  goal,  and  without  a  progress 
towards  a  goal  there  can  be  no  development,  and,  moreover. 


THE  HISTORICAL  METHOD  i8i 

that  without  this  ideal  goal  being  an  efficient  factor,  there  can 
be  no  change  from  a  lower  to  a  higher.  One  might  well  go 
back  to  Hegel,  or  if  the  name  repels,  back  to  Aristotle  where 
Hegel  went,  for  a  concrete  view  of  development  as  a  world- 
process  and  of  all  processes  within  the  world  of  time  and  space 
that  make  them  to  be  more  than  mere  mechanical  changes.  I  do 
not  know  of  a  more  valuable  piece  of  work  to  be  done  to-day  than 
that  of  a  clear,  re-statement  of  Aristotle's  theory  of  development 
under  the  rubrics  of  the  four  causes,  and  of  potentiality,  actu- 
ality, matter,  form,  entelechy — of  the  world  of  thought  and  ex- 
istence in  the  process  up  from  formless  matter  towards  matter- 
less  form.  His  theory  preserves  mechanism  as  subordinate  to 
teleology,  and  gives  full  place  for  the  abstract  work  of  science 
within  the  concrete  work  of  philosophy.  "Back  to  Aristotle" 
to-day  would  mean,  for  many,  forward  from  a  dead  mechanism 
to  a  living  organic  process  of  the  evolution  of  concrete  ration- 
ality in  time  and  space  experience. 

In  mechanics  we  have  only  change.  To  read  development 
into  changes,  we  must  read  them  teleologically,  in  the  light  of 
final  causes.  It  is  only  changes  which  are  relative  to  an  end 
or  result  that  are  developing  changes.  All  mechanism  itself 
involves  purpose.  As  Taylor  says:  "A  true  machine,  so  far 
from  being  purposeless,  is  a  typical  embodiment  of  purpose." 
"Not  only  are  all  machines,  in  the  end,  the  product  of  designing 
intelligence,  but  all  machines  are  dependent  upon  external  pur- 
posive intelligence  for  control There  is  always  somewhere 

a  man  to  work  it."^  The  mechanical  is  always  subordinate  to 
purpose.  We  form  mechanical  habits  of  conduct  and  make  all 
sorts  of  labor-saving  machines  that  we  may  have  freedom  for 
larger  spontaneous  activities. 

Logically,  this  mechanical  conception  of  the  universe  leads  to 
the  conception  of  a  Deus  ex  machina,  an  extern  Deity,  otiose 
but  dignified ;  the  maker  of  so  perfectly  an  automatic  machine 
that  it  needs  no  superintendence.     At  best  it  leads  to  a  physical 

*A.  E.  Taylor,  Elements  of  Metaphysics,  pp.  236,  237. 


i82  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

pantheism.  God  is  all  nature,  and  all  nature  is  all  that  God  is. 
All  parts  of  nature  are  but  parts  of  one  stupendous  God. 

A  machine-making  God  or,  a  God  who  is  a  machine,  is  the 
logical  goal  of  mechanical  conceptions. 

Of  course  nothing  moral  or  religious  is  here  possible.  The 
word  machine  grates  upon  the  ear,  even  in  its  use  in  describing 
human  beings.  It  gives  us  a  cold  shudder  to  have  Wordsworth 
use  it  in  his  otherwise  perfect  little  poem  to  his  wife : 

"And  now  I  see  with  eyes  serene 
The  very  pulse  of  the  machine." 

Aimless  changes  can  never  be  significant  of  development. 
Again  in  all  changes  there  must  be  a  continuity  of  identity. 
The  new  thing,  the  new  self  must  have  a  core  of  identity  with 
the  old.  Topsy  now  is  the  same  as  Topsy  then,  or  else  Topsy 
never  "grow'd."  That  is,  all  changes  are  those  of  something 
changing.  In  mechanics  there  is  always  a  "given"  element 
taken  for  granted — an  atom,  a  germ,  an  heredity,  an  environ- 
ment. In  biology  there  are  "gemmules,"  "inherent  growth 
forces."  "Persistence  of  type"  is  as  fundamental  an  element 
as  variations.  The  latter  are  mechanically  accounted  for  by 
changing  environment. 

But  the  given  type  or  heredity — ^the  identical  element  must 
surely  itself  be  accounted  for.  The  mechanical  theory  ac- 
counts for  it  by  previous  environments.  But  environments  of 
what  ?  It  is  still  environments  of  a  given  something,  a  definite 
something  that  is  changed — atom,  germ,  heredity,  the  primor- 
dial atom,  protoplasm,  proto — something  definite.  Still  the 
proto  is  a  "given'  or  the  regjess  must  be  ad  infinitum.  The 
same  is  also  true  of  the  environment.  Back  in  the  abyssmal 
darkness  of  chaos,  the  scientific  imagination  sees  something 
definite,  something  already  formed — ^but  still  evolution  must 
have  formed  it.  Here  too  we  find  the  superiority  of  Aristotle's 
theory  of  development.  He  posits  two  things,  as  relatively 
and  abstractly  distinct — formless  matter,  or  non-being,  and 
matterless  form  or  absolute  being.     Every  relative  form  of  be- 


THE  HISTORICAL  METHOD  183 

ing  is  a  phase  of  the  superimposition  of  form  upon  the  formless 
— ^the  non-existent.  We  shall  shortly  return  to  this  in  our  ex- 
amination of  the  category  of  potentiality. 

Abiding  by  a  "given"  we  must  then  posit  it  as  moving  or 
being  moved.  But  this  lands  us  at  once  in  Zeno's  unanswerable 
paradoxes — unanswerable  I  mean  on  the  empiricist's  theory, 
except  by  positing  another  "given"  that  moves.  Motion  implies 
(a)  two  places  and  (b)  that  the  identical  thing  must  be  in  two 
places  at  the  same  time.  Motion  implies  succession  both  in 
time  and  space.  But  that  which  is  successive  cannot  be  in  the 
same  time,  and  that  which  is  in  two  places  at  the  same  time  can- 
not be  the  same  thing.     Thus  motion  is  inconceivable. 

But  again,  in  all  development,  something  identical  must  be- 
come something  different.  In  all  forms  of  development  the 
given  identical  thing  is  perpetually  transcending  itself.  The 
given  X  must  change,  or  be  changed  by  another  "given." 
Though  it  must  preserve  a  certain  modicum  of  identity,  there 
must  be  difference  within  it  when  it  is  changed  into  xy.  The 
babe  Topsy  transcends  itself,  becomes  different  and  yet  remains 
the  same  in  the  woman  Topsy.  But  it  is  scientific  nonsense  to 
say  that  anything  ever  transcends  itself.  No  such  miracles  are 
allowable.  The  thing  is  changed  by  environment  into  something 
else  which  in  turn  changes  or  is  changed  ad  infinitum.  The 
quantity  of  matter  or  force,  however,  always  remains  identical. 
But  then  it  is  qualitative,  determinate  changes  that  face  us  in 
development.  It  is  only  in  qualitative  quantity  that  we  can  speak 
of  development.  And  no  amount  of  mere  quantitative  changes 
can  give  us  quality,  though  Spencer  assures  us  that  "by  small  in- 
crements of  modifications,  any  amount  of  modification  may,  in 
time,  be  generated."  Great,  verily,  is  the  power  of  imperceptible 
changes!  Thus  x  becomes  xy,  xys,  xyz  etc.,  and  yet  it  must 
remain  x  or  there  is  no  nexus  of  continuity.  If  the  changes  are 
only  those  of  the  addition  of  external  environments,  we  have  no 
organic  process  but  merely  the  sum  of  x-\-y-\-s,  only  quantitative 
changes.     X  can  never  transcend  its  old  self  to  become  a  new 


i84  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

one.  It  either  remains  unchanged  by  the  quantitative  addition, 
and  then  there  is  no  development,  or  it  becomes  a  different  thing, 
and  then  there  is  no  continuity.  In  the  quantitative  reahn,  x 
can  never  transcend  itself  in  a  process  of  self-development. 
Imperceptible  external  additions  are  only  a  scientific  mythology. 
The  lower  can  never  change  into  the  higher.  "It  takes  a  man 
to  beget  a  man."  It  takes  a  living  babe  to  become  a  full  grown 
man.  It  takes  form  to  supervene  upon  the  formless,  to  make 
qualitative  changes  in  any  quantitative  given,  in  order  to  a  devel- 
opment of  it.  Development  involves  not  only  a  present  laden 
with  the  past,  but  also  a  present  laden  with  the  future,  which  is 
not  yet.  It  involves  an  ideal  end  as  well  as  the  actual  begin- 
ning. But  empirical  mechanism  discards  the  ideal  as  a  dream 
of  the  imagination.  Thus  it  fails  to  see  that,  though  in  the  order 
of  time  a  lower  form  precedes  the  higher  form,  yet,  from  the 
analysis  of  its  constitutive  nature,  the  form,  the  ideal,  the  end 
must  enter  as  a  factor  of  its  development.  That  is,  in  the  order 
of  real  existence,  the  perfect  precedes  the  imperfect,  the 
whole  the  part  as  efficient  factors  in  any  process  of  development. 
Thus  the  merely  chronological  sequences  of  quantitative  changes 
are  impotent  to  explain  development.  In  any  beginning  there 
must  not  only  be  a  chaos  of  an  "indefinite,  incoherent  homo- 
geneity," but  also  the  Logos,  thought,  mind,  purpose,  in  order 
to  the  evolution  of  cosmos — or  to  the  evolution  of  man  through 
the  historical  lower  forms  of  life.  It  takes  then,  let  us  say 
boldly,  in  theological  language,  a  God  to  beget  a  man. 

With  abstract  identity  and  abstract  difference  there  is  no 
process  of  development.  Mechanism  can  at  best  say  here  we 
have  X  and  here  3;  and  here  we  have  xy.  It  is  only  as  they 
are  both  seen  to  spring  from  a  ground  that  we  can  find  any  con- 
sequence worth  calling  an  existence.  The  ground  is  the  con- 
crete unity  of  identity  and  difference.  The  ground,  or  Leib- 
nitz's category  of  sufficient  reason,  is  a  relative  explanation  of 
the  process  from  lower  to  higher.  Its  consequences  are  a  self- 
evolution.     Heredity  and  variations,  identity  and  difference  are 


THE  HISTORICAL  METHOD  185 

held  apart  as  separate  external  things  by  the  mechanical  view, 
and  so  no  ground  can  be  given  for  development.  Empirically 
one  finds  this  and  then  that,  but  the  living  link  that  makes  a  this 
that  or  a  somewhat  is  lacking.  At  best  there  is  an  internecine 
struggle  for  existence,  and  that  which  happens  to  survive  is 
called  the  fittest — that  is,  the  strongest.  But  the  living  link  of 
continuity  or  development  is  lost,  because  these  elements  are  not 
conceived  of  as  elements  of  an  organic  process  towards  an  end. 
And  all  that  the  empirical  analysis  can  give  is  these  elements  as 
separate,  external  to  each  other.  Hence  its  attempt  to  explain 
organisms  by  mechanism  is  always  the  logically  awkward  one  of 
putting  the  cart  before  the  horse.  Thus  the  mechanical  analy- 
sis of  all  forms  of  organism  give  at  best  dijecta  membra.  No 
self-analysis  or  self-synthesis  is  allowed  and  hence  no  self-de- 
velopment. That  is,  we  have  only  juxtaposition  and  addition, 
no  vital  synthesis.  Life  and  growth  and  mental  phenomena  are 
not  sensuous  facts,  and  hence  no  stretching  of  mechanical  cate- 
gories can  ever  embrace  them. 

Mechanical  evolution  now  discards  the  vitalistic  and  the 
germinal  theories.  This  latter  form  of  evolution  implied  a 
previous  involution — emanation  a  previous  immanation.  Noth- 
ing can  be  evolved  which  is  not  first  involved.  The  botanist 
then  worked  with  the  germ  theory.  He  believed  that  if  he  had 
strong  enough  microscopes  he  could  see  trunk,  limb,  leaves  and 
fruit  inlaid  in  the  microcosmic  germ.  That  is  now  a  discarded 
superstition  for  biologists.  For  the  supposed  involute  was 
only  another  hypothetical  but  imperceptible  physical  element. 

However,  we  often  find  them  slipping  into  the  same  organic 
view  under  cover  of  the  te^rm  potential.  The  oak  is  potentially 
in  the  acorn,  plus  a  juxtaposed  environment.  Thus  Tyndall 
saw  in  matter  "the  promise  and  potency  of  all  terrestrial  life."^ 

*"By  an  intellectual  necessity  I  cross  the  boundary  of  the  experi- 
mental evidence,  and  discern  in  that  matter  which  we,  in  our  ignorance 
of  its  latent  powers  and  notwithstanding  our  professed  reverence  for 


i86  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

Taken  seriously,  we  should  have,  in  this  famous  confession 
of  faith,  a  latent  Deus  ex  machina.  Nature  as  an  automaton 
means  self -activity,  self-development.  But  then  we  are  out  of 
and  above  the  realm  of  passive  mechanical  changes  and  far  into 
the  realm  that  philosophy  calls  reality.  "The  potency  of  all  ter- 
restrial life"  can  never  be  found  in  any  mechanical  changes  in 
the  matter  of  metaphysical  scientists.  Faith  must  invoke  a  lat- 
ent deity,  when  a  revealed  God  is  denied.  Those  who  hold  the 
mechanical  view  of  reality,  use  the  term  potential  in  either  a 
mythological  or  realistic  form.  In  its  realistic  form  it  is  em- 
pirical potency.  A  glass  of  wine  in  the  stomach  of  a  poet  is 
potential  of  a  poem.  It  is  a  mere  question  of  a  mechanical 
transformation  of  energy. 

If  we  are  too  advanced  to  think  of  going  back  to  Aristotle 
to  learn  the  function  of  the  potential  in  any  form  of  develop- 
ment, let  us  go  to  the  Century  Dictionary.  Potence  means 
power,  efficacy,  capacity  of  producing  certain  results.  The 
potential  is  always  properly  found  as  an  organic  correlative  of 
actuality.  It  may,  abstractly,  stand  for  a  future  actual.  What 
is  potentially,  is  virtually  the  actual.  It  is  a  mere  question  of 
time.  In  physics  we  have  potential  energy,  a  mere  positional 
form,  but  also  a  force  function,  the  latent  suppressed  amount 
of  work-capacity  of  any  system.^  In  no  proper  use  of  the 
term  does  it  ever  signify  the  merely  possible. 

A  mere  possibility  is  as  good  as  nothing.  A  potential  is 
virtually  as  good  as  an  actual.  A  potential  thing  is  indeed 
itself  always  some  form  of  the  actual.  It  has  a  past  history 
and  a  formed  character.  But  it  is  called  potential  only  in 
reference  to  some  other  assured  future  form  of  actuality.  It 
has  a  goal,  an  end,  a  result — future,  but  as  good  as  actual. 
Thus  teleology  slips  in,  or  rather  is  seen  to  be  an  essential 
element  of  potentiality.     The  potential  has  a  here  and  now 

its  Creator,  have  hitherto  covered  with  opprobrium,  the  promise  and 
potency  of  all  terrestrial  life." — Belfast  Address,  1874,  P-  75- 
^  Cf.  Mach's  Science  of  Mechanics,  p.  449. 


THE  HISTORICAL  METHOD  187 

actuality,  because  it  has  had  a  past  process.  It  is  to  have 
a  there  and  then  form,  because  it  is  to  have  a  future  history. 
The  acorn  is  an  actuahty,  but  with  reference  to  an  actual  oak 
tree,  it  is  potential.  According  to  the  mechanical  view,  the 
nerve  of  its  future  process  is  the  same  as  that  of  its  past  process 
— one  of  external  causality.  For  any  form  of  a  given  actuality, 
as  we  have  seen,  is  always  to  be  resolved  into  successive  aggre- 
gations of  environments.  But  this  again  eviscerates  the  poten- 
tiality of  all  potency,  and  we  can  only  speak  of  the  impotency  of 
the  potent,  unless  we  either  frankly  or  surreptitiously  bring 
in  the  factors  of  self-activity  and  final  cause  or  end.  The  mass 
of  matter  which  we  call  an  acorn  is  a  potential  oak,  only  so 
far  as,  either  immanently  or  transcendentally,  the  genus  tree,  is 
a  factor  in  the  process.  Bricks  and  lumber  are  potential  of  a 
house,  but  only  as  the  builder  and  the  architect  and  the  plan 
of  a  house  as  a  future  end  or  result,  enter  as  factors  into  the 
process.  The  potential  abstracted  from  its  organic  correlation 
with  these  ideal  factors  is  as  good  as  nothing.  That  is,  to 
make  the  potential  more  than  a  mere  capricious  possibility,  it 
must  be  seen  to  be  organically  related  to  a  potent,  ideal,  future 
end.  Abstracted  from  this,  the  potential  has  no  "promise  and 
potency"  of  anything.  But  here  we  are  back  to  Aristotle's 
matter  and  form,  potentiality  and  actuality,  material  and  final 
causes.  The  final  cause  becomes  the  first  and  the  efficient  cause 
of  the  process. 

Moreover,  to  understand  the  finite  processes  of  potentialities 
becoming  other  forms  of  actuality,  there  is  implied  an  Absolute 
Actual,  a  matterless  Form — a  Form  which  has  eternally  realized 
all  its  potentialities,  or  which  never  had  any  potentialities. 
The  goal,  the  end  is  not  a  future.  It  is  timeless,  yet  the 
source  of  time  and  space  and  all  movements  therein — the  Un- 
moved Mover — a  causal  actuality  because  a  Causa  Sui.  This 
actual  is  always  prior  to  and  causal  of  all  finite  potentialities, 
and  of  their  ever  rising  into  higher  forms  of  actuality — all  na- 
ture being  a  perpetually  graduated  conversion  of  matter  into 


i88  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

form  of  the  potential  into  the  actual.  But  this  is  shocking  non- 
sense for  those  who  hold  the  mechanical  theory  as  the  ultimate 
interpretation  of  nature.  We  have  gone  back — nay,  let  us  say, 
the  term  potential  has  forced  our  thought  back,  to  Aristotle's 
Theology. 

A  primordial  atom  is  an  allowable  hypothesis,  but  a  Prime 
Mover,  an  Actus  Purus,  a  Causa  Sui,  an  absolute  Self-con- 
sciousness— a  God — well,  the  mechanical  interpretation  of  the 
universe  has  "no  need  of  that  hypothesis."  But  without  such  an 
hypothesis  one  cannot  intellectually  comprehend  the  rationality 
of  the  universe,  or  of  the  grades  of  reality  in  the  physical  world, 
or  the  progressive  development  of  higher  out  of  lower  forms 
of  life.  Otherwise  we  have  only  a  world  of  changes.  But  phi- 
losophy insists  that,  in  order  to  a  rational  comprehension,  what 
is  last,  that  is  the  end  or  result,  in  any  chronological  process,  is 
really  first  in  the  order  of  real  being — that  it  is  from  one  point 
of  view,  the  creative  form  fulfilling  empty  potentialities,  or, 
from  another  point  of  view  it  is  the  longing,  the  desire,  the  love 
for  the  form  that  is  the  self-fufiUing  potency  of  the  imperfect. 
In  the  light  of  such  a  First  Principle  alone  can  the  possibility  of 
development  in  any  form  be  understood — and  in  its  light  we 
have  all  nature  lifted  up  out  of  the  dead  mechanism  of  external 
changes — a  process  of  evolution  through  the  inorganic  to  the 
organic  and  then  into  all  forms  of  the  organic ;  through  the  un- 
conscious to  consciousness.  Here  life,  self-activity,  self- 
realization  of  all  possible  potentialities  are  possible,  because  in 
each  potential  is  a  greater  than  itself.  And  yet  this  greater 
than  the  empirical  self  is  its  own  true,  higher  self,  urging,  press- 
ing on  towards  a  goal.  Time  and  space  are  seen  to  be  the  cradle 
and  the  nursery  and  the  school  in  which  God  is  training  His 
sons  into  full  manhood — in  the  organic  body  of  His  Eternal 
Son. 

Thus  philosophy  speaks  in  identical  language  with  religion, 
and  both  speak  in  terms  that  are  nonsense  to  those  whose  only 
dialect  for  interpreting  the  universe  is  that  of  the  mechanical 


THE  HISTORICAL  METHOD  l80 

theory.  Mechanism  we  still  have,  and  the  mechanical  theory 
has  still  its  proper  sphere  and  work.  But  mechanism  is  ex- 
plained as  subordinate  to  teleology,  organ  to  function,  the  lower 
to  the  higher.  The  contention  is  not  against  any  of  the  good 
work  done  under  the  concept  of  mechanism,  but  it  is  only 
against  it  when  it  is  urged  as  an  ontological  theory  to  explain 
the  whole  of  reality.  The  contention  is  that  all  theists  should 
recognize  the  absolute  impossibility  of  having  God,  freedom  and 
immortality  under  such  an  ontological  theory. 

Intellectually,  as  well  as  morally,  one  must  find  in  the  lowest 
form  of  religion  a  truer  interpretation  of  the  world  and  life, 
than  that  offered  by  the  metaphysical  mechanical  theory — in 
such  a  form,  for  instance,  as  it  is  given  by  Hackel  in  his  Riddle 
of  the  Universe. 

The  contention  is,  that  to  understand  any  change  as  a  de- 
velopment, we  must  use  higher  categories  than  those  of  mechan- 
ism.   There  must  be  an  avdfiaxn<s  eis  oXAo  yevo^. 

"The  limits  of  evolution"  have  been  so  frequently  pointed 
out  and  never  as  yet  intellectually  disproven,  that  I  need  only 
barely  mention  a  few  of  them.  Professor  Howison  states  the 
following  :* 

I.  The  chasm  between  the  phenomenal  and  the  noumenal, 
which  is  asserted  to  be,  but  to  be  unknowable. 

II.  The  break  in  the  phenomenal  world  between  the  inor- 
ganic and  the  organic. 

III.  The  further  break  between  physiological  and  logical 
genesis. 

IV.  The  gulf  between  the  Unknowable  and  the  explana- 
tory. 

V.  The  gulf  between  nature  and  human  nature  viewed  as 
essentially  reason. 

Let  not  the  fairy  tales  of  science,  the  limitless  flights  of  the 
imagination  of  some  of  the  plebifiers  of  science  impose  them- 
selves upon  us  as  forms  of  knowledge.     Thankful  for  every  ad- 

*  George  H.  Howison,  The  Limits  of  Evolution,  Chap.  I. 


igo  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

vance  of  mechanism  in  giving  us  useful  short-hand,  symbolical 
descriptions  of  an  abstract  phase  of  reality,  we  are  under  the  in- 
tellectual and  moral  necessity  of  declining  it  as  an  ontological 
theory.  We  have  no  use  for  a  machine  that  puts  on  airs,  takes 
the  reins  and  assumes  the  mastery  of  the  maker.  Intellectually 
such  ontological  airs  of  mechanism  are  ridiculous,  morally  they 
are  mortal  foes.  Intellectually,  science  is  bankrupt  when- 
ever it  becomes  a  pseudo-metaphysic,  as  it  so  often  does,  because 
science  as  such  cannot  honor  the  drafts  drawn  upon  her  ontology 
by  life,  teleology,  self-activity,  self-consciousness,  self-determin- 
ation. And  let  no  one  be  deceived  by  any  attempted  subterfuges 
ofttimes  offered  by  the  lesser  lights  of  science. 

It  is  an  unpardonable  impertinence  for  any  scientific  men 
to  deride  metaphysics,  and  then  to  bring  in  a  poor  metaphysics 
of  their  own — a  reification  of  the  merely  conceptual — ^to  account 
for  the  actual.  The  business  of  science  is  not  to  interpret  the 
concrete  whole  of  experience,  but  to  describe  the  abstract  phe- 
nomenal. Mechanism  is  the  best  tool  for  description.  Plato 
said  that  "even  God  geometrizes."  Descartes  prophesied  a  uni- 
versal mathematics  as  the  regnant  method.  IModern  physical 
science  is  rapidly  realizing  this  prophecy.  As  exact  science  she 
can  tolerate  no  dissent  from  her  mathematical  formulas,  which 
are  all  on  the  level  with  the  proposition  that  two  and  two  make 
four. 

But  when  we  pass  from  mathematical  physics  to  the  reified 
theories — the  metaphysics  of  some  men  of  science  we  pass  the 
limits  of  science.  Here  the  odium  scientiUcum  becomes  as  in- 
tolerable as  the  old  dead  and  buried  odium  theologicum.  The 
rubbish  chamber  of  heaven  or  the  limbo  of  the  inferno  is  not 
even  now  wholly  occupied  by  defunct  theological  forms.  We 
dare  believe  that  some  current  forms  of  scientific  theory,  and  all 
forms  of  the  metaphysics  of  scientific  men — all  reification  of 
matter,  force,  ether,  electrons,  as  the  ultimately  real — will  find 
their  future  abode  therein. 

Science  is  not  bankrupt.     Science  can  never  be  bankrupt,  so 


THE  HISTORICAL  METHOD  igi 

long  as  she  abstains  from  metaphysics  and  sticks  to  her  voca- 
tion of  bringing  all  sensuous  phenomena,  under  mechanical 
laws,  as  short-hand  formulas  of  description  of  an  abstract, 
external  world — abstracted,  I  mean,  from  consciousness.  For 
the  concrete  world  is  a  knozvn  world.  Even  the  external  world 
can  never  be  known  to  exist  apart  from  the  knower,  the  "plus 
me"  element  in  all  experience.  It  is  pseudo-science  that  asserts 
the  external  world  to  exist  independently  of  consciousness,  in 
the  same  form  as  it  appears  for  consciousness.  It  is  thus  doing 
what  true  science  abhors.  It  is  making  an  assertion,  which 
from  the  nature  of  the  case,  it  can  never  possibly  prove.  Our 
world  is  always  a  known  world,  always  the  object  of  a  subject. 
It  can  never  be  known  apart,  because  it  never  exists  apart,  from 
a  knower. 

Though  all  physics  imply  and  demand  a  metaphysis,  it  is  not 
within  the  scope  of  science  to  furnish  it.  For  she  deals  only 
with  a  phenomenal,  external  world,  abstracted  from  the  knower. 
This  is  the  view  of  such  leaders  in  science  as  Mach,  Ostwald, 
Kirchhoff,  Helmholtz  and  Kelvin.  They  banish  metaphysics 
from  their  science,  and  avowedly  decline  to  reify  their  working 
conceptions  of  atoms,  mass,  force,  ether,  electrons  and  laws  of 
nature.  Rigid  science  has  nothing  to  do  with  final  causes,  with 
freedom  or  with  God.  Such  hypotheses  would  interfere  with 
her  legitimate  task.  Indeed,  science  as  such  has  no  business 
whatever  with  the  higher  and  more  concrete  forms  of  reality. 
That  is  the  business  of  philosophy  and  theology  and  the  human- 
ities. 

Here  two  and  two  make  five.  Tolstoi  said  that  every 
prayer  is  a  petition  that  two  and  two  may  make  more  than  four. 
Sir  Oliver  Lodge  says  that  "the  whole  controversy  hinges,  in 
one  sense,  on  the  efficacy  of  prayer,"  and  then  goes  on  to  criti- 
cise Huxley's  contention  against  the  efficacy  of  prayer.  More 
things  are 

"wrought  by  prayer 

Than  this  world  dreams  of." 


193  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

"Even  in  medicine  it  is  not  absurd  to  suggest  that  drugs  and  no 
prayer  may  be  almost  as  foolish  as  prayer  and  no  drugs."^ 

In  fact,  are  we  not  intellectually  compelled  to  say  that  the 
only  way  in  which  there  can  be  progress  instead  of  mere  quanti- 
tative changes ;  the  only  way  in  which  there  can  be  any  devel- 
opment of  the  higher  out  of  the  lower  is  by  two  and  two  becom- 
ing more  than  four  ?  Here  then  must  be  the  energizing  of  an 
immanent  or  a  transcendent  power  and  intelligence  that  is  more 
than  mass  and  motion.  Mind  and  matter  are  always  more  than 
two.  God  and  one  man  are  always  a  majority.  And  the  ex- 
ternal world  is  never  without  mind  or  God,  and  so  evolution  is 
possible. 

"A  fire  mist  and  a  planet, 

A  crystal  and  a  cell, 
A  jelly  fish  and  a  Saurian, 

And  caves  where  cave  men  dwell; 
Then  a  sense  of  law  and  beauty. 

And  a  face  turned  from  the  clod, — 
Some  call  it  evolution. 
And  others  call  it  God." 

A  man  is  more  than  the  quantitative  equivalent  of  proto- 
plasm or  monkey  plu^  an  infinite  quantity  of  external  environ- 
ments. Mind  is  qualitatively  different  from  matter.  There  is 
a  difference  in  kind  between  a  stone  and  a  plant.  Mechanical 
changes  can  only  give  difference  of  quantitative  aggregations. 
"A  face  turned  from  the  clod"  can  be  no  evolution  from  the  clod. 
It  is  different  in  kind. 

Strict  science  logically  precludes  the  explanation  of  any  non- 
sensuous  forms  or  elements  of  concrete  experience.  It  does  its 
proper  work  when  it  refrains  from  expressing  any  doctrines  on 
these  subjects.  It  is  out  of  its  bounds  when  it  attempts  to  show 
that  its  principles  and  results  lead  to  any  form  of  Theism  or 
morality.  It  transgresses  its  limits  much  more  when  it  assumes 
the  role  of  metaphysics,  as  it  does  when  it  takes  its  phenomena 
and  their  laws  of  succession  and  coexistence  as  real  realities 

^  Ci.  Ideals  of  Science  and  Faith,  Chap.  I. 


THE  HISTORICAL  METHOD  193 

and  their  constitutive  relations.  When  it  does  this,  when  it 
reifies  its  abstractions  of  atoms,  matter,  force,  cause,  it  gives  us 
a  metaphysics  which  absolutely  precludes  all  forms  of  freedom 
and  spirituality.  But  in  doing  this  it  is  no  longer  science,  but 
the  poor  metaphysics  of  a  pseudo-science. 

We  demur,  then,  to  physical  science  having  the  last  word  to 
say  in  man's  interpretation  of  experience.  We  do  so  because 
(a)  its  categories  are  applied  to  an  abstract  phase  of  experience 
for  the  practical  purpose  of  dealing  successfully  with  this  por- 
tion, (b)  because  of  the  limitations  and  self-contradictions  of 
the  categories  of  thought  used  by  mechanical  science,  when 
otherwise  applied.  The  mechanical  theory  gives  a  measured 
mechanical  description  of  external  phenomena  in  terms  of  mass 
and  motion,  which  by  no  means  exhaust  all  phases  of  even  this 
abstract  world. 

Again  we  demur  to  the  attempt  to  make  the  interpretation 
of  concrete  experience  given  by  physical  science  to  be  knowl- 
edge, in  the  strict  sense  of  the  term,  while  other  interpretations 
are  placed  outside  of  the  realm  of  knowledge.  It  is  a  technical 
and  historical  blunder  to  identify  the  term  science  with  merely 
physical  science.  At  least,  it  is  to  be  said,  that  all  interpreta- 
tions of  experience — scientific,  ethical  and  religious — are  on  a 
par  as  to  validity,  though  not  on  a  par  as  to  relative  concrete- 
ness  of  interpretation. 

And  now,  after  this  wearisome  and  semi-technical  examina- 
tion of  the  meaning  and  use  and  limitations  of  the  categories 
with  which  mechanistic  science  works,  in  contrast  with  the 
higher  and  more  concrete  categories  of  philosophy,  we  return 
to  a  consideration  of  the  limitations  of  the  historical  method,  in 
itG  scientific  form.  The  ardent  exponents  of  this  method  now 
claim  that  it  dominates  in  the  study  of  all  things — not  only  in 
history  proper,  but  in  everything  that  has  a  past  with  successive 
stages.  And  everything  in  time  has  such  a  part.  The  theory  of 
evolution  claims  to  be  a  history  of  all  things  up  to  date.  It  is 
thus  a  form  of  the  historical  method.     But  the  proper  field  of 

13 


194  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

this  method  is  that  of  human  history  and  the  social  institutions 
of  man.  This  method  does  its  proper  work  in  making  a  minute 
and  exhaustive  inventory  of  the  antecedent,  concomitant  and 
subsequent  stages  in  the  temporal  process  of  any  institution.  It 
furnishes  the  data  for  their  rational  explanation.  The  work 
done  by  the  exponents  of  this  method  has  been  enormous^  mar- 
velously  painstaking  and  accurate  and  in  every  way  admirable. 
They  have  attempted  to  reproduce  the  events  of  a  past  phase 
of  human  activity — to  give  an  exact  narrative  of  the  complex 
facts  of  the  time — to  make  the  past  veritably  a  present  to  us. 
They  have  ransacked  libraries  of  books  and  all  sorts  of  docu- 
mentary and  archaeological  evidence.  When  doing  its  proper 
work  this  method  avoids  all  ideological,  didactic  and  ethical  pre- 
conceptions. It  seeks  only  for  facts,  rather  than  an  interpreta- 
tion, though  it  often  has  forgotten  that  facts  themselves  are  but 
fossilized  interpretations.  It  seeks  the  historical  origin  of  in- 
stitutions, the  chronological  stages  of  their  formation.  It  holds 
that  none  of  them — laws,  constitutions,  religions — ever  come 
full-made  to  man.  They  all  have  a  history.  What  then  are 
the  facts  of  their  history  ? 

Pages  of  rhetoric  would  not  suffice  to  tell  of  the  vast  and  dis- 
interested labor  done  by  its  exponents,  or  of  the  immense  in- 
crease of  knowledge  of  the  past  of  present  institutions  in  the 
myriad  forms  of  anthropology.  No  other  body  of  workers  in 
science  has  done  more  or  done  it  better  than  the  students  of 
history. 

It  is  only  when  this  method  is  also  used  as  the  ultimate 
method  of  the  explanation  of  a  present  by  its  past,  making  its 
natural  history  to  be  its  full  and  true  history,  that  we  find  its 
limitations.  When  used  as  an  explanatory  method  we  find  that 
it  generally  uses  the  categories  of  physical  science.  That  is, 
it  uses  the  category  of  empirical  causality  and  banishes  that 
of  teleology.  Too  often,  too,  it  uses  causality,  not  in  the  posi- 
tivistic  sense  of  sequence  and  coexistence,  to  which  it  has  been 
reduced  in  science,  but  in  its  earlier  animistic  sense  of  force  or 


THE  HISTORICAL  METHOD  195 

external  compulsion.  Logically,  all  it  can  say  is,  now  we  have 
A,  with  a,  b,  c — 2  as  environment,  and  then  we  have  B.  But, 
too  often,  it  regards  B  as  caused  by  A-\-a,  b,  c — 2.  Thus  it 
seeks  to  explain  the  status  quo  of  any  institution  in  the  light  of 
its  past  changes,  making  them  the  efficient  causes  of  its  present 
form.  But,  as  we  have  seen,  efficient  causality  must  either  be 
eviscerated  of  all  efficiency  or  else  be  made  to  include  a  first  and 
final  cause. 

This  method  rightly  asks  for  ihe  that  (on),  but  wrongfly 
proceeds  to  make  the  that  (on)  equivalent  to  the  why  (Siort) 
though  here,  strangely  enough,  it  is  following  the  etymolog- 
cal  derivation  of  on  —  8ia  toBto  o  n.  But,  logically,  the  why 
is  a  different  category  from  the  how.  The  why  is  the  reason, 
the  cause  the  to  ov  evcKa^  which  is  always  the  end,  or  final 
cause.  It  forgets  its  Aristotle — that  the  true  nature  of  any- 
thing is  not  to  be  found  in  its  potential  or  immature  material 
form,  but  in  its  fully  realized  form  or  its  cvTeAej(£ia.  Thus  the 
true  nature  of  the  acorn  is  only  to  be  seen  in  its  realized  form 
of  an  oak — that  of  the  new-born  babe  in  its  form  of  manhood. 

Thus  the  historical  method  comes  to  look  too  exclusively 
backward  rather  than  forward  and  upward,  in  its  explanation 
of  any  development.  At  best  it  gets  to  the  category  of  reci- 
procity— of  thing  and  environment,  both  of  which  are  only 
accidentally  and  externally  related  to  each  other.  Mere  jux- 
taposition becomes  the  efficient  cause.  It  fails  to  remember 
that  its  analysis  of  the  given  thing  is  always  resolvable  into 
previous  juxtapositions.  It  fails,  too,  to  see  that  it  always  pre- 
supposes some  form  of  self-activity — that  at  least  thing  and 
environment  are  organically  connected  in  the  process.  But 
again,  while  illogically  using  the  semi-organic  form  of  reci- 
procity, it  fails  to  see  that  organic  development  implies  besides, 
self-activity  and  a  future  as  well  as  a  past.  For  any  organism, 
as  an  organism,  is  not  in  space  at  all. 

In  an  organism,  each  part,  or  rather,  each  function,  is  both 
means  and  end.     It  is  a  system  or  unity  made  up,  not  of  me- 


196  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

chanical,  but  of  cooperative  functions.  Each  lives  for  the 
others  and  the  whole.     The  whole  lives  in  and  for  each  part. 

The  living  plant  or  animal — its  organic  life  growth  is  an 
invisible,  intangible  something  that  can  in  no  way  be  seen,  or 
seen  to  be  the  result  of  any  external  thing.  Food  in  the  stom- 
ach is  transmuted,  not  by  mechanical  or  chemical  processes, 
though  both  of  these  go  on  in  the  stomach. 

Given  the  cells,  still  an  organism  is  not  merely  a  mechanical 
aggregation  of  cells,  and  yet  no  mechanical  science  can  find  the 
causal  linkage  uniting  them  into  one  system.  In  the  lowest 
form  of  vital  organism  there  is  a  cooperation  of  organs  that  is 
quasi-purposive,  that  unites  them  into  one  in  a  way  absolutely 
different  from  the  way  in  which  parts  of  a  machine  are  united. 
In  the  machine,  the  purposive  cooperation  of  the  parts  is  en- 
tirely external — that  is,  in  the  mind  of  the  maker  of  it.  In  an 
organism  the  matter  changes,  but  the  life  preserves  its  identity. 
In  a  machine  this  is  not  so.  Part  after  part  may  be  replaced 
till  the  whole  identity  is  gone.  An  old  stocking  may  be  darned 
and  darned  till  not  a  fibre  of  the  old  stocking  remains,  but 
then  it  is  another  stocking.  In  a  body,  every  material  par- 
ticle may  be  other  than  it  was  a  few  years  before  and  yet  the 
life  keep  its  identity. 

An  organism  is  never  simply  the  sum  of  its  external  parts. 
Its  parts  are  never  merely  external  parts.  They  are  members  of 
an  organic  system,  which  realizes  itself  in  its  members.  As 
Aristotle  put  it,  a  hand  dissevered  from  a  living  body  is  no 
longer  a  hand.  The  life  of  the  body  of  man,  or  of  any  of  his 
institutions,  is  not  a  sensuous  form  of  existence.  It  is  always 
more  than  the  mechanical  aggregate  of  its  sensuous  conditions 
— past  and  present.  There  is  something  in  all  organisms  and 
their  self-active  development  that  no  sense  nor  sense-extending 
scopes  can  ever  see — something  that  no  mere  past  of  external 
factors  can  ever  explain.  "There  is  a  mystery,"  not  only  "in 
the  soul  of  state,"  but  in  the  life  of  every  human  institution, 
that  is  beyond  the  ken  of  the  keenest  scopes  of  physical  science. 


THE  HISTORICAL  METHOD  197 

An  organism  is  always  an  organism  of  organs,  functions  that 
have  no  sensuous  existence.  A  development  is  always  an 
organic  process  of  realizing  at  one  stage,  what  was  not  pres- 
ent at  a  relatively  initial  stage.  It  is  always  an  ideal  continuity 
of  a  being  forever  devouring  its  own  present,  in  creating  its 
own  future.  Science  is  hopelessly  bankrupt,  when  she  passed 
out  her  mechanical  paper  money  to  honor  the  checks  drawn 
upon  her  for  life,  organisms,  development  and  self-realization 
in  any  form.  We  insist  that  no  mere  past  can  account  for  the 
present  of  any  organism;  that  for  the  efficient  pulse  of  any 
development  we  must  look  to  the  ideal  end — the  future  that 
has  as  yet  no  sensuous  existence — gradually  realizing  itself 
through  the  means  of  external  circumstances ;  that  in  any  de- 
veloping form  there  is  immanent  a  greater  than  it — an  unactu- 
alized  ideal  that  is  the  potency  of  its  future  form. 

The  neglect  of  this  ideal  and,  empirially,  future  element, 
hopelessly  invalidates  any  mechanical  explanation  of  historical 
development.  This  enforcement  of  the  forceless  category  of 
causality  to  the  neglect  of  that  of  teleology  vitiates  too  often 
much  of  the  work  of  the  historical  method  when  used  as  a 
method  of  explanation.  Fortunately,  logical  consistency  is 
often  neglected,  and  we  have  theories  of  society  and  social  insti- 
tutions, professedly  based  on  mechanical  view,  so  well  embel- 
lished with  teleological  and  ethical  terminology  as  to  conceal 
their  real  principle,  sometimes  even  from  the  writers  themselves. 
But  never  can  any  form  of  mechanical  explanation  give  other 
than  a  stone  for  bread.  When  offered  to  theists  a  homely 
proverb  is  a  sufficient  criticism :  "A  china  egg  may  fool  even 
a  hen,  but  it  won't  make  a  good  omelet." 


II.    The  Philosophical  Form  of  the  Historical  Method. 

Our  criticism  of  the  empirical  or  scientific  school  of  the  his- 
torical method  has  already  developed  its  philosophical  form. 


198  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

Here  too,  as  we  have  already  seen,  the  conception  of  develop- 
ment is  a  regnant  principle.  The  physical  development  has 
seen  to  be  logically  possible,  only  on  condition  of  the  meta- 
physical principle  of  Mind  and  the  category  of  Final  Cause. 

Everything  that  grows  or  develops  is  as  full  of  the  future 
as  it  is  laden  with  the  past.  For  anything  to  transcend  its  pres- 
ent sensuous  form,  there  must  be  a  factor  that  is  spatially  and 
temporally  unreal,  immanent  within  it,  whether  unconsciously 
as  in  the  unorganic,  or  sub-consciously  as  in  the  plant,  or  con- 
sciously as  in  man.  It  is  to  this,  the  ideal,  the  future,  the  end 
that  has  no  actuality,  as  an  environment,  that  we  must  look  to 
for  the  use  and  control  of  mechanical  processes,  making  them 
into  agents  and  ministers  of  organic  processes.  Every  develop- 
ing process,  could  it  be  conscious  and  utter  its  experience,  would 
say,  "in  me  lives  a  greater  than  me,"  The  acorn  has  the  generic 
ideal  within  it — not  sensuously  and  yet  really — and  its  growth  is 
relatively  a  self-realization  of  its  genus.  At  best  it  is  a  co- 
worker with  this  potent  non-physical  generic  factor  in  the  proc- 
ess of  its  development.  So  when  any  method  explains  the  pres- 
ent form  of  a  human  institution  by  the  aggregate  of  its  past  an- 
tecedents and  environments  we  demur — non  demonstrandum 
est.  Consciousness,  though  chronologically  later  in  its  appear- 
ance on  earth  than  the  unconscious,  cannot  have  been  merely  a 
product  of  the  unconscious.  In  fact  all  the  categories  used  for 
the  interpretation  of  experience  are  found  only  in  that  of  self- 
consciousness.  They  are  its  grips,  or  hands,  or  keys  to  bring 
order  out  of  chaos.  To  put  it  in  a  well  worn  phrase,  the  source 
of  the  categories  can  never  be  made  subject  to  its  own  cate- 
gories. It  is  always  transcendental,  standing  apart  from,  while 
efficiently  immanent  within,  the  historically  processes,  and, 
later,  interpretative  of  these  processes. 

Whence  this  ideal  element  in  plant,  animal  and  man? 
Whence,  in  particular,  the  animating  compulsory  ideals  that  we 
find  in  any  analysis  of  human  institutions?  Only  through  an 
ideal  of  a  better  condition  has  there  been  a  progress  out  of  a 


THE  HISTORICAL  METHOD  199 

lower  one.  Only  through  the  ideal  of  the  Best  have  there  been 
ideals  of  a  better.  Not  backwards  through  aggregations  of 
lower  forms;  nor  backward  to  the  primordial  atom,  must  the 
eye  be  cast  in  explaining  the  history  of  man's  achievement  since 
his  strugggle  out  of  lower  forms  of  life.  No  mere  past,  no  mere 
chronological  succession  of  past  empirical  states  can  account  for 
these  ideals  of  a  better  and  a  Best,  except  so  far  as  those  states 
are  seen  to  implicate  the  empirically  self-transcending  element. 
Put  the  philosophical  answer  in  theological  form,  and  we  say 
they  are  only  accountable  for  by  the  conception  of  God  in  his- 
tory— present,  not  wholly  immanently — else  nature  would  be 
God — nor  wholly  transcendentally  or  externally  else  nature 
would  have  no  self-activity  or  worth.  As  Aristotle  would  say, 
the  world  has  its  vital  principle  or  ultimate  and  concomitant  or- 
igin in  God,  and  this  principle  exists  not  merely  as  a  form  imma- 
nent in  the  world,  like  the  order  in  an  army,  but  also  as  an  abso- 
lute self-existent  substance,  like  the  general  of  an  army.  Thus 
the  ultimate  presupposition  of  intelligent  will  must  always  be 
the  plus  element  of  any  lower  stage,  in  order  to  an  advance  to 
a  higher  stage.  For  the  development  of  consciousness  out  of 
the  unconscious,  of  the  moral  out  of  the  non-moral,  of  the  high- 
est forms  of  ethical  institutions  out  of  the  brute  struggle  for  ex- 
istence— in  every  form  of  development  there  is  an  intellectual 
"need  of  this  hypothesis."  The  prius  of  all  activity  as  well  as 
of  all  thought  is  that  of  perfect  Self-consciousness,  self-activity, 
the  Actus  Purus  of  the  scholastics,  the  Prime  Mover  or  Self- 
consciousness  of  Aristotle,  the  Good  of  Plato,  the  God  of  Chris- 
tians— all  of  which  is  arrant  nonsense  to  mechanical  meta- 
physics. This  timeless  prior  is  the  intellectually  necessary  pre- 
supposition in  all  development;  necessary  not  only  to  its 
changes,  but  also  necessary  as  a  standard  by  which  alone  we 
can  say  that  any  change  is  either  intellectually  or  morally  a 
progress  rather  than  a  lapse.  And  yet  this  Is  just  the 
hypothesis  of  which  mechanical  science  and  the  science  of  his- 
tory "have  no  need."    Take  away  the  semi-popular  but  mere- 


200  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

tricious  embellisliments  of  many  natural  histories  of  man's 
ethical,  political  and  religious  institutions  and  you  will  find,  as 
their  principle,  that  of  a  mechanism  in  which  the  hypothesis  of 
God,  freedom  and  immortality  are  absolutely  ruled  out.  There 
should  be  no  mistake  about  this.  What  is  needed  is  strenuous 
criticism  of  their  fundamental  principle  as  an  insufficient  First 
Principle. 

If  in  the  beginning  there  was  only  a  mass  of  heterogenous 
homogenousness,  there  must  have  been  either  an  immanent  or 
a  transcendent  element  of  self -activity,  towards  self-realization 
in  the  form  that  modern  civilization  now  bears.  The  leaden, 
slimy  past,  without  this  ideal  future  of  any  human  institution 
is  just  as  much  "a  past  that  never  was  a  present,"  as  any  myth- 
ical "golden  age."  This  plus  element  must  be  added  to  any  for- 
est of  monkeys  to  get  the  Edenic  garden  of  the  present.  The 
Christian  institution  of  marriage,  though  historically  traceable 
to  lowly  forms  of  animal  promiscuity,  can  be  seen  to  be  an  evo- 
lution from  these  lowly  forms,  only  in  the  light  of  this  plus  ele- 
ment. Conscience  and  morality,  though  traceable  to  lower 
forms  of  conduct,  and  this  conduct  to  mechanical  forms  of  mo- 
tion, (Spencer)  need  this  plus  element  as  constitutive  of  the  up- 
ward movement.  We  cannot  do,  as  Spencer  insists  that  we  must, 
"interpret  the  more  developed  by  the  less  developed."  No  mere 
"aggregations  of  simple  excitations  or  compounding  of  simple 
presentative  feelings"  can  account  for  "the  relations  between 
feelings,"  or  for  the  rise  of  intelligence  and  purpose.^  We  may 
grant  all  the  chronological  steps  which  Spencer  traces  in  the 
evolution  of  moral  conduct,  and  yet,  without  this  plus  element, 
we  have  only  a  series  of  changes.  In  a  real  sense  then,  the  per- 
fect does  precede  the  imperfect.  Though,  chronologically,  its 
empirical  form  is  always  a  future,  it  is  actually  present  as  form- 
ative and  generic  in  the  process.  Thus  no  merely  mechanical 
chronological  series,  "simple"  or  "compound"  or  "re-com- 
pounded" can  account  for  the  existence  of  any  form  of  morality 
*  Cf.  Spencer's  Data  of  Ethics.  Chaps,  V,  VI,  VII. 


THE  HISTORICAL  METHOD  201 

or  of  the  moralizing  institutions  of  family,  state  and  church. 
"They  reckon  ill  who  leave  me  out." 

It  is  in  this  plus  element  that  we  find  not  merely  the  only 
sufficient  spring  of  development,  but  also  the  real  ontological 
element  that  accounts  for  the  chronological  evolution  of  the 
higher  out  of  the  lower.  The  Final  Cause  is  the  light  in  which 
we  can  understand  those  human  ideals  that  have  ever  urged 
man  upward.  Only  in  its  light  can  we  make  the  judgment 
on  any  transformation,  that  it  is  an  improvement — a  progress, 
a  development.  In  the  blind,  unconscious  struggle  of  pre- 
human nature;  in  the  struggles  for  existence  and  for  better 
forms  of  existence  there  is  always  this  attractive  Final  Cause 
operative,  and  its  efficiency  in  any  change  is  the  measure  of  its 
reality.^ 

Respice  finem  has  been  the  immanent  potency  in  plant,  ani- 
mal and  man,  in  all  their  upward  movements.  Teleology  is 
regnant  at  least  in  the  sphere  of  the  truly  human.  The  ideal 
method  of  science  is  anti-teleological.  And  the  historical 
method  inclines  to  the  same  mechanical  view  in  its  interpreting 
the  present  by  its  past  external  history.  It  is  only  a  source  of 
intellectual  confusion  for  the  idealistic  view  to  coquet  with 
the  empirical  view.  If  it  is  nonsense  to  explain  a  mountain 
in  terms  of  morals,  it  is  no  less  nonsense  to  explain  morals  and 
the  moral  institutions  of  man  in  terms  used  to  explain  the 
mountain.  All  the  past  external  elements  of  an  institution 
do  not  explain  it.  It  is  always  more  than  the  sum  of  external 
parts,  as  is  every  organism.  To  say  that  there  was  at  a  rela- 
tively first  time,  or  time  of  origins,  or,  to  use  Spencer's  formula, 
"an  indefinite,  incoherent  homogeneity,  passing  to  a  definite 
coherent  heterogeneity"  may  possibly  be  an  abstract  descrip- 
tive formula  of  chronological  stages  of  sensuous  existence. 
It  is  only  to  say  first  we  have  x,  then  x'^,  x^ — x*^.     It  is  no 

*This  is  Aristotle's  conception  of  the  unmoved  Mover  which  moves, 
which  acts  upon  the  world  as  the  primary  object  of  desire:  Ktvci  5s 
ipmfievcv. 


202  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

explanation,  causal  or  teleological.  Besides  the  adjectives  used 
in  the  formula  qualify  the  nouns  out  of  all  substantial  meaning. 
An  indefinite,  incoherent  homogeneity  is  an  unthinkable  homo- 
geneity. Spencer's  formula  is  abracadabra,  unless  we  in- 
terpret the  adjectives  as  the  thought  element  and  the  nouns  as 
the  matter  element.  And  then,  the  religious  interpretation  of 
the  world-process  given  in  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis  and  the 
first  chapter  of  St.  John's  Gospel,  interpret  the  process  much 
more  intelligibly. 

It  is  the  boast  of  the  historical  school  that  this  method  has 
forever  exploded  the  credibility  of  a  golden  age  in  the  past; 
of  innate  moral  or  intellectual  ideas  in  the  mind;  of  natural 
rights  in  the  state ;  of  a  supernatural  revelation  in  religion — in 
a  word,  of  a  higher  form  preceding  a  lower  form.  It  has 
refuted  the  lapse  theory  in  general. 

We  admit  this.  We  accept  the  chronological  sequences  that 
a  patient  minute  historical  investigation  finds  in  any  field  of 
inquiry.  We  admit  that  the  golden  age  is  historically  a  fiction ; 
that  the  Garden  of  Eden  was  probably  a  forest  of  monkeys,  and 
that  long  prior  to  that,  chronologically,  there  was  protoplasm, 
then  proto-sUme  and  then  />ro/o-nothing,  but  an  indefinite,  in- 
coherent infinity  of  homogeneousness.  No  theist  need  hesitate 
to  accept  clearly  proven  chronological  data,  or  the  evolutionary 
theory  as  a  short-hand  descriptive  formula  of  the  chrono- 
logical sequences  of  an  abstract  portion  of  reality  as  mere  sense 
data  are.  But  to  accept  this  as  an  ontological  explanation  is 
beyond  the  capacity  of  any  intellect  that  knows  that  two  and 
two  never  make  five,  even  though  the  chronological  antecedents 
carry  us  back  to  times  before  man  had  any  conception  of  ab- 
stract numbers,  and  before  the  evolution  theory  was  evolved. 

As  the  mechanical  chronological  past  series  of  changes  can- 
not account  for  any  development,  neither  can  it  afford  any  stand- 
ard by  which  we  can  measure  any  change  so  as  to  make  the 
judgment  that  it  is  an  evolution,  a  development,  a  progress. 
And  when  we  come  to  measure  the  progress  and  the  worth  of 


THE  HISTORICAL  METHOD  203 

any  existing  institution,  we  necessarily  imply  a  standard,  or  end, 
or  ideal. 

But  it  is  one  of  the  natural  and  almost  inevitable  vices  of 
any  empirical  method,  that  in  seeking  to  explain  the  higher  by 
the  lower,  it  lowers  the  real  worth  of  the  higher  form.  Profes- 
sor Dicey  puts  it  very  mildly  when  he  says :  "The  possible 
weakness  of  the  historical  method  as  applied  to  the  growth  of 
institutions  is,  that  it  may  induce  men  to  think  so  much  of  the 
way  in  which  an  institution  has  come  to  be  what  it  is,  that  they 
cease  to  consider  with  sufficient  care  what  it  is  that  an  institu- 
tion has  become."^  Mankind  comes  to  be  humiliated  in  view 
of  its  very  humble  origin. 

These  exploiters  of  the  lowly  empirical  origin  of  man  and 
his  institutions  might  quote  these  words  of  the  prophet  Isaiah : 
"Look  unto  the  rock  whence  ye  were  hewn  and  the  hole  of  the 
pit  whence  ye  were  dug."  (Isaiah  LI,  i.).  But  in  quoting, 
they  would  pervert  his  meaning.  The  prophet  is  exhorting  the 
righteous  to  look  back  to  their  noble  ancestors,  as  an  inspiration. 
They  ought  to  be  some  persons  of  account,  because  of  their  lin- 
eage from  persons  of  account.  But  when  the  pit  whence  man 
was  digged  is  that  of  lowly,  brutish  form;  and  when  the  mind 
is  assiduously  studying  those  forms,  the  estimate  of  what  man 
and  his  institutions  are  take  on  a  different  estimate.  There  is 
indeed  a  just  prejudice  felt  by  man  when  told  to  look  to  such  a 
pit  for  inspiration — against  the  derivation  of  man  from  beast, 
Christianity  from  Judaism  and  Judaism  from  lower  forms  and 
finally  all  religion  from  that  of  the  fear  of  ghosts  (Spencer)  ;  of 
psychology  from  physiology  and  that  from  physics  and  that 
from  matter,  motion  and  space  as  the  ultimate  elements  of  the 
real.  "Go  to  the  ant  thou  sluggard ;  consider  her  ways  and  be 
wise"  (Proverbs  VI,  6)  are  words  of  practical  wisdom.  But  go 
to  the  ape  thou  man,  consider  his  ways,  to  understand  what  thou 
art,  is  neither  intellectual  nor  practical  wisdom.  Much  wiser 
would  it  be  to  say  to  the  ape,  go  to  the  man  thou  beast ;  consider 
*  Dicey,  The  Law  of  the  Constitution,  pref.  to  ist  ed. 


304  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

his  ways  and  be  wise  as  to  thy  future  goal.  The  actual  ape,  as 
potential  man,  might  thus  learn  something  that  would  aid  his 
progress  into  actual  manhood.  This  conscious  ideal  in  the  apes 
would  hasten  the  process,  going  on  through  the  persuasion  of 
the  unconscious  ideal,  of  this  rising  "on  stepping-stones  of  their 
dead  selves  to  higher  things."  If  not,  then  how  can  the  man 
learn  anything  about  his  own  essential  form  from  the  study  of 
the  ape.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  anthropologists  always  interpret 
the  lower  in  the  light  of  the  higher ;  the  ape  in  the  light  of  their 
knowledge  of  man.  Their  observation  of  the  ape's  character- 
istics are  interpretations  from  the  human  standpoint.  Often  they 
anthropomorphize  too  much  in  attributing  special  cleverness  to 
animals,  and,  anon,  they  de-anthropomorphize  or  animalize  too 
much  in  their  study  of  man. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  they  do — and  cannot  do  other- 
wise than — reverse  Spencer's  rule  to  "interpret  the  more  devel- 
oped by  the  less  developed."  The  student  of  the  ape,  not  being 
an  ape,  knows  more  about  the  ape  than  the  ape  himself,  simply 
because  he  knows  more  of  the  developed  form  of  the  ape,  as 
found  in  man.  He  looks  at  the  ape's  potentialities  in  the  light  of 
their  actualization  in  man.  With  a  clear  apprehension  of  the 
functions  in  the  higher  form,  he  can  see  the  imperfection  in  other 
forms,  which  make  them  lower.  He  understands  a  part  by  his 
understanding  the  whole — an  elementary  or  lower  stage  by  his 
knowledge  of  the  developed  stage.  And  the  same  is  true  of  the 
historical  method  as  applied  to  the  various  chronologically  suc- 
cessive stages  of  any  human  institution,  intellectual  or  practical. 
Jurisprudence  to-day  is  comparative  jurisprudene — an  interpre- 
tation of  diverse  past  and  lower  forms  in  the  light  of  its  most 
developed  form.  Politics  is  comparative  politics — an  interpreta- 
tion of  many  past  forms  in  the  light  of  its  modern  form.  Phi- 
lology is  comparative  philology.  The  science  of  all  arts  and 
institutions  is  comparative,  and  the  more  developed  serves  to 
explain  how  other  forms  are  less  developed.  And  then  alas !  for 
Spencer's  formula,  even  the  more  developed  is  explained  in  com- 


THE  HISTORICAL  METHOD  205 

parison  with  an  ideal  that,  as  yet,  has  no  actual  time  and  space 
existence.  The  goal  may  fly  and  forever  fly,  but  some  relative 
idea  of  the  goal  is  always  a  chief  factor  in  the  explanation  of 
how  some  form  is  relatively  more  elementary  and  undeveloped 
than  another.  Some  ideal  of  the  normal  is  present  in  all  study 
of  the  abnormal.  Some  actual  straight  line  or  perfect  circle,  or 
absolutely  frictionless  mass,  or  perfect  vacuum — or,  since  these 
are  confessedly  never  actual — some  ideal  of  them  is  present  in 
the  mind  of  the  student  who  studies  their  actual  forms.  No  bet- 
ter illustration  of  how  we  can  understand  the  imperfect  in  the 
light  of  an  ideal  perfect  can  be  given  than  the  method  that  Spen- 
cer follows  in  his  chapter  on  "Absolute  and  Relative  Ethics."' 
Here  he  does  not  follow  his  formula  of  explaining  the  higher 
by  i\^e  lower.  He  formulates  the  ideal  of  a  straight  man  in  a 
straight  community;  the  ideal  of  a  completely  evolved  man  in 
a  completely  evolved  society,  "to  serve  as  a  standard  for  our 
guidance  in  solving,  as  well  as  we  can,  the  problems  of  real  con- 
duct." 

It  is  too  often  more  than  the  Implied  judgment,  that  if  man 
was  derived  from  such  lowly  forms,  then  his  own  form  is  not  so 
very  high.  The  study  of  the  lowly  earlier  forms  of  his  best  in- 
stitutions, has  at  least  a  depressing  effect  upon  the  estimation  of 
their  present  validity  and  worth.  Professor  Sidgwick  in  speak- 
ing of  the  sceptical  effect  of  tracing  the  historical  growth  of  be- 
liefs is  inclined  to  deny  that  it  has  any  logical  justification.  He 
attributes  it  to  the  psychological  effect  of  the  concentration  of 
the  mind  upon  the  vast  and  bewildering  stages  of  their  devel- 
opment and  maintains,  e.  g.,  that  so  far  as  ethics  is  concerned, 
the  ascertainment  of  the  origin  and  development  of  moral  ideas 
cannot,  logically,  have  any  such  general  effect  in  destroying  our 
confidence  in  our  present  moral  ideals.^ 

But  this  effect  is  logical,  in  any  merely  empirical,  historical 
view.     Monkey  and  protoplasm  are  not  more  lowly  forms  than 

^  Data  of  Ethics,  Chap.  XV. 

'^  Philosophy,  Its  Scope  and  Relations,  pp.  163-164. 


ao6  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

"the  dust  of  the  ground"  out  of  which  it  is  said  that  the  Lord 
God  formed  man."  (Gen.  II,  7).  But,  there,  it  is  added  that 
the  Lord  "breathed  into  his  nostrils  the  breath  of  Hfe  and  man 
became  a  hving  soul."  We  may  accept,  as  most  of  us  do,  the 
evolutionary  account  of  the  origin  of  man  out  of  lower  forms  of 
life,  but  always  with  the  plus  element  of  an  immanent  or  tran- 
scendent Perfect,  If  in  the  dust,  or  protoplasm  or  gibbering 
monkey,  there  was  a  greater  than  the  empirical  dust,  protoplasm 
or  monkey,  then  the  genesis  of  man  out  of  and  above  them,  be- 
comes intelligible  and  validates  the  worth  of  the  evolved  man. 
Otherwise  such  an  evolution  does  logically  invalidate  our  esti- 
mation of  man  and  his  place  in  nature.  Moreover  such  merely 
empirical  origin  of  man's  beliefs  and  institutions ;  of  his  cate- 
gories of  thought  and  of  his  doctrine  of  evolution  itself,  invali- 
dates his  estimate  of  their  validity.  For,  ontologically,  it  is  held 
that  the  sum  total  of  empirical  reality,  be  it  matter  or  force,  is  an 
unchanging  quantity,  and  that  all  we  have  are  mechanical  inte- 
grations and  disintegrations  of  this  one  matter  or  force.  Under 
this  view  man  is  at  least  less  than  the  Son  of  God.  If  it  does  not 
"take  at  least  a  man  to  beget  a  man,"  much  less  does  it  take  a 
God. 

But  really  the  merely  empirical  antecedents  of  man,  his  man- 
ners, morals  and  moralizing  institutions  of  family,  state  and 
church  is  no  valid  measure  of  their  worth.  They  are  what  they 
have  become  and  do  what  they  do,  because  of  the  implicit  impulse 
to  rationality,  which  is  more  explicit  or  developed  than  in  earlier 
elementary  forms.  But  logically  we  cannot  make  this  judgment 
without  the  assumption  of  the  plus  element.  Logically  one  is 
bound  either  to  assume  the  miracle  of  the  evolution  of  higher  out 
of  lower  forms,  or  to  doubt  the  applicability  of  the  terms  higher 
and  better  to  any  forms.  In  fact  we  often  find  these  two  incon- 
genial  forms  of  judgment  and  mood  strangely  and  illogically 
blended  in  the  minds  of  students  of  the  historical  past  of  any 
creed  or  institution.  Faith  in  the  supersession  of  all  other  meth- 
ods of  studying  human  institutions  by  the  historical  method,  the 


THE  HISTORICAL  METHOD  207 

consummate  method  of  consummated  man  to  date,  and  forever 
hereafter — faith  in  this  method  as  a  progressive  development 
out  of  antiquated  methods,  and  faith  in  progress  generally,  is 
often  combined  with  sceptical  views  as  to  the  validity  and  worth 
of  even  the  present.  Depredators  of  the  past,  they  are  at  one 
moment  appreciators  of  the  present  as  the  real  golden  age.  The 
spirit  of  the  Aufkldrung  is  upon  them.  With  the  unhistorical 
"age  of  reason,"  they  believe  that  the  present  reason  of  historical 
students  is  the  ultimate  standard  of  adjudication  of  all  institu- 
tions ;  that  the  rational  is  finally  to  be  found  in  the  reason  of  the 
intellectually  elite  students  of  history.  Weighed  in  the  balance, 
the  past  of  all  institutions  is  found  imperfect.  And  then,  in  the 
same  spirit  of  the  Enlightenment,  the  present  form  of  all  devel- 
oped institutions  is  found  to  be  of  little  worth.  The  cold,  scep- 
tical cynicism  of  the  enlightenment  is  turned  upon  present  in- 
stitutions and  the  Aufkldrung,  the  rationalism  of  the  "unhis- 
torical eighteenth  century,"  becomes  an  Auskldrung — an  out- 
clearing,  not  only  of  the  unworthy  past  but  of  the  unworthy 
present. 

Professor  Sidgwick  has  aptly  and  logically  classified  these 
two  heterogenous  judgments — moods,  I  would  rather  say — of 
the  exponents  of  the  historical  method  as  those  of  "relativity" 
and  "progressivism,"  or  the  destructive  and  the  constructive 
judgments  of  the  historical  method.^  But  he  errs  in  making  the 
destructive  judgment  illogical.  For  the  whole  of  empiricism 
moves  in  the  sphere  of  the  relative,  and  that  too  of  relatives  that 
are  relative  to  nothing  other  and  higher  than  themselves.  With- 
out ideals  and  a  final  cause,  there  is  only  change. 

Thing  and  environment,  cause  and  effect,  are  all  relatives — 
mere  juxtapositions  which  may  be  changed  the  next  moment — 
all  are  mere  appearances  which  appear  only  to  disappear.  The 
disappearance  of  reality,  in  present  as  well  as  in  past  forms, 
becomes  the  theme.     Here  relativity  attacks  "the  unique  quality 

^Philosophy,  Its  Scope  and  Relations,  p.  162. 


208  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

of  being  true,  which  we  attribute  to  the  opinions  of  our  own 
time."  The  imperfection  and  falsity  of  earHer  forms  of  creed 
and  deed  cannot,  without  a  miracle,  be  absent  from  their  present 
forms.  The  lower  cannot  beget  the  higher.  There  is  no  higher : 
all  are  low.    Burns's  line — 

"A  man's  a  man  for  a'  that," 
becomes  "For  a'  that,"  for  his  ascent  from  lower  form,  not  his 
descent  from  God — he  is  not  a  man.  "For  a'  that"  of  the  past 
of  any  institution,  it  is  not  a  valid  present  institution.  The  pre- 
sent is  relative  to  the  "a'  that"  of  the  past,  and  both  are  only  rel- 
ative transformations  of  an  identical  imperfect.  A  lie  resting 
upon  a  lie  in  the  past,  cannot  lead  to  anything  but  a  lie  in  its 
present  or  future  form.  The  indefinite  regress  into  past  imper- 
fection cannot  lead  to  a  definite  progress  into  present  perfection. 
No  product  can  be  separated  from  its  process,  and  the  product 
itself  is  in  a  process.  Process  and  product  are  alike  relative. 
The  historical  method,  devoted  primarily  to  the  process,  merges 
the  product  into  the  process.  Terms  dependent  on  relatives  are 
themselves  only  relative  terminals,  and  here  we  find  no  similia 
similibus  for  a  cure.  Everything  is  relative  and  fallible.  Our 
judgment  itself  is  relative  and  fallible.  So  evolution  may  be 
a  devolution,  and  we  become  detractors  of  the  present.  Knowl- 
edge itself  is  relative — relative  to  the  knower  and  to  the  known  ; 
and  the  known  is  relative — relative  to  the  knower  and  itself  a 
lot  of  relations.  Evolution  is  relative ;  the  historical  method  is 
relative,  and  all  relatives  abstracted  from  an  organic  system  can 
never  be  other  than  abstract,  relative — untrue.  In  such  a  stage 
of  thought,  authority  for  judgments  of  truth  and  validity  is  no- 
wheres,  and  the  liberty  of  license  everywhere — no  truth  and 
hence  no  real  freedom. 

Thus  one  mood  of  the  historical  method  is  intellectually,  to 

sit  apart,  beholding  all  forms  of  creeds  and  deeds,  while  holding 

none,  and  practically  to  cease  to  urge  men  onward,  as  they  are 

without  the  slightest  idea  of  the  goal,  and  finally  to  cease  to 

"Scorn  delights  and  live  laborious  days," 


THE  HISTORICAL  METHOD  209 

in  order  "to  pass  from  the  relative  truth  of  the  nineteenth,  to  the 
relative  truth  of  the  twentieth  century,  supposing  the  latter  to  be 
not  a  jot  more  true,  or  less  merely  relative  than  the  former." 

Hegel,  in  speaking  of  those  who  follow  the  historical  method 
in  the  study  of  dogmas,  says  that  they  are  "like  clerks  of  some 
mercantile  house,  who  keep  account  only  of  somebody  else's 
wealth  without  having  any  property  of  their  own.  It  is  true 
they  receive  a  salary,  but  their  chief  function  is  to  record  the 

wealth  of  others They  occupy  themselves  with  truths  that 

were  truths  for  others.  They  know  as  little  of  the  inner  truth 
as  a  blind  man  does  of  a  painting,  even  though  he  handles  the 
frame.  They  know  only  how  a  certain  dogma  was  established 
by  this  or  that  council,  what  reasons  the  framers  of  it  advanced 

and  how  one  or  the  other  came  to  predominate Much  is  told 

us  of  the  history  of  the  painter  of  the  picture  and  of  the  fate  of 
the  picture  itself,  what  price  it  had  at  different  times,  into  what 
hands  it  came,  but  we  are  never  permitted  to  see  anything  of  the 
picture  itself."^  But  the  picture — "The  play's  the  thing"  to 
catch  the  heart  and  conscience  of  true  students  of  history.  When 
the  divine  drama  is  not  seen  within  the  panorama  of  changing 
and  relative  scenes  of  history,  our  truly  human  interest  must 
flag.  We  must  get  beyond  the  sphere  of  the  relative ;  get  at  the 
Hamlet  of  the  play ;  get  at  the  central,  self-relating  principles 
that  make  mere  relatives  to  be  significant,  because  seen  to  be 
relatives  in  an  organic  system. 

Indeed  we  must  pass  beyond  the  conception  of  relativity,  in 
order  to  pronounce  any  stage  of  the  process  to  be  merely  relative. 
There  must  be  self-relation,  system  as  a  standard  of  judgment. 

Before  passing  to  the  consideration  of  the  judgment  of 
Progress,  we  may  note  another  curiously  topsy-turvy  form  of 
judgment,  that  the  use  of  the  strictly  historical  method  some- 
times develops.  Instead  of  depreciating  the  present  rather  than 
the  past  forms  of  institutions,  we  find  such  noted  historical  stu- 
dents as  Professors  Edwin  Hatch,  and  A.  Harnack,  patiently 

*  Hegel's  Philosophy  of  Religion,  I,  41. 
14 


aio  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

and  successfully  tracing  the  development  of  historical  Christi- 
anity through  nineteen  centuries.  They  find  the  development 
of  Christian  polity,  creed  and  ritual  to  have  been  a  colossal 
blunder.  But  they  believe  in  a  golden  past,  a  pure,  primitive 
undeveloped  form — an  essence  of  Christianity,  of  which  all  de- 
veloped forms  are  degenerations — an  evolution  that  is  a  devo- 
lution. They  take  us  back  and  picture  the  empirical  present  of 
the  life  and  times  of  a  pious  Jewish  peasant,  who  wrote  no 
book,  developed  no  theology  and  established  no  definite  institu- 
tion. From  this,  as  from  a  germ  and  successive  hostile  envi- 
ronments, it  developed,  or  rather  degenerated,  into  the  mighty 
and  broad  forms  of  the  Christian  Church.  But  the  develop- 
ment has  been  only  a  smothering  of  the  essence.  There  has 
been  no  God  in  history,  at  least  in  the  development  of  historical 
Christianity.^  It  has  been  a  development  of  the  husk  to  the 
smothering  of  the  kernel  of  Christianity.  This  is  only  another 
form  of  the  pessimism  so  often  sequent  upon  the  use  of  the  his- 
torical method. 

The  relativity  of  the  relative,  gives,  as  we  have  seen,  at 
least  suspense  of  judgment  as  to  any  historical  process  being 
true  or  false,  good  or  bad.  This  is  the  logic  of  relativity.  But 
when  relativity  is  thought  out ;  when  its  inherent  contradictions 
are  made  explicit,  we  are  logically  forced  to  the  standpoint  of 
self-relation,  system,  an  organic  whole,  of  which  the  relative 
parts  are  organic  members.  This  organism  may  be  a  state  or 
church,  or  humanity ;  or  it  may  be  That  in  which  all  social  or- 
ganisms live  and  move  and  have  their  being,  without  its  being 
simply  the  total  of  them  all.  It  is,  in  a  word,  the  plus  element 
of  all  empirical  origins  and  histories,  in  the  light  of  which  alone 
we  can  see  the  significance  of  any  organ,  or  its  progressive 
improvement  in  its  function  as  an  organ.  Professor  Sidgwick, 
while  holding  that  the  historical  method  logically  leads  to  the 
judgment  of  progress  in  the  sociological  sphere,  denies  that  its 
lack  of  teleology  precludes  its  being  the  final  adjudicator  in  the 

*Cf.  Chap.  n. 


THE  HISTORICAL  METHOD  211 

matter.  In  fact,  his  praise  of  the  judgment  of  progress  is  very- 
faint  :  "The  one  important  lesson  the  method  teaches  us  being 
the  vague  lesson  of  patience  and  hope."^ 

With  this  he  hands  the  question  over  from  the  "consensus  of 
experts,"  to  philosophy,  or  rather  to  ethics.  Here  again  we  find 
the  weakness  of  his  logic.  It  does  not  lead  him  to  the  "one  far- 
off  Divine  event  to  which  the  whole  creation  moves.  It  leads 
him  only  to  moral  teleology.  His  ultimate  postulate  is  that  of 
a  "Moral  order."  Here  he  halts  and  declines  to  have  the 
mind  make  its  ascent  to  God.  He  believes  that  ,/e  may 
hold  to  a  Moral  order  as  ultimate,  without  the  further  pos- 
tulate of  a  Moral  Orderer.  "We  may  believe  in  Moral  order — 
'the  power  not  ourselves  that  makes  for  righteousness'  (Mat- 
thew Arnold's  well-worn  formula)  without  connecting  it 
with  Personality."^  But  here  we  are  concerned  not  with 
Professor  Sidgwick's  views,  but  with  the  logic  of  the 
judgment  of  progress  under  the  historical  method.  It  may 
be  said  in  passing,  that  both  chronologically,  and  from  the  em- 
pirical standpoint,  logically,  his  placing  Relativism  before  Pro- 
gressivism  is  a  ww-placement.  Historically,  the  optimistic 
view  of  history  came  first.  It  was  the  child  of  Romanticism 
and  of  the  idealistic  philosophy  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
Lessing  and  Herder  were  inspired  by  the  genetic  method  of 
studying  history.  And  "genetic"  is  the  explanatory  term  ap- 
plied to  the  historical  method  by  its  exponents.  Gradual 
growth  of  the  higher  from  lower  forms  of  man's  institutions 
through  an  immanent  element  of  self-realization  led  back  to  a 
historical  renaissance,  Hegel  gave  the  idealist  impulse  to  the 
method  that  almost  founded  and  largely  dominated  the  his- 
torical school  for  a  generation.'    The  eternally  human  was  al- 

*  Philosophy,  Its  Scope  and  Relations,  p.  231. 

*  Op.  cit.  pp.  243-4. 

*  Professor  Sidgwick,  a  conspicuous  exponent  of  the  historical 
method  and  hostile  to  absolute  Idealism,  says  that  "  the  present  pre- 
dominance of  the  historical  method  is  largely  due  to  Hegel."  Sidg- 
wick's History  of  Ethics,  p.  268.  > 


213  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

most  divinized  by  the  Romanticists,  who  sought  to  trace  its 
progressive  development  or  education  in  and  through  history. 
Hegel  gave  the  logic  of  the  method  and  stimulated  the  concrete 
study  of  history — far  as  this  was  removed  from  his  own  spe- 
cial speculative  work. 

What  is  the  meaning  and  order  of  the  successive  changing 
forms — in  the  history  of  any  institution,  of  mankind  itself? 
What  part  of  "the  vision  of  splendid"  has  any  age  or  people 
caught  and  partially  embodied  in  its  institutions  ?  The  histor- 
ical sense  had  its  origin  in  this  romantic  and  idealistic  view  of 
the  world — or  rather  of  humanity. 

At  this  stage  of  the  method,  there  was  no  question  as  to 
progress ;  the  gradual  evolution  of  the  involved  generic  nature 
of  humanity.  Every  form  of  every  human  institution  was 
looked  upon  as  a  degree  of  the  actualization  of  the  potential 
perfection  of  humanity,  and  as  having  its  progressive  degree  of 
worth  and  validity.  But  later  on  the  school  fell  under  the 
dominance  of  the  concepts  of  physical  science.  Thencefor- 
ward, the  boast  of  progress  becomes  more  feeble  and,  when- 
ever uttered,  illogical.  Psychologically,  also,  the  progress- 
judgment  is  prior.  The  enthusiasm  for  the  historical  method 
is  primarily  optimistic.  The  historical  sense  uses  the  historical 
method  to  see  the  meaning  and  worth  of  any  stage,  and  how  it 
developed  into  forms  of  higher  meaning  and  worth.  Sincere 
and  earnest  and  indefatigable  pursuit  of  truth — the  noble  de- 
votion to  the  study  of  insignificant  details,  is  primarily  aroused 
and  inspired  by  the  belief  that  the  significance  and  worth  of 
any  epoch  or  institution  can  best  be  seen  and  explained  by  the 
results  of  such  a  method.  This,  we  have  seen,  was  the  mood  of 
the  earlier  exponents  of  this  method.  The  pessimistic  mood 
in  later  scholars  may  be  traced  not  only  to  academical  weari- 
ness, but  it  is  the  logical  result  of  such  studies  pursued  under 
the  conception  of  relativity. 


THE  HISTORICAL  METHOD  213 

In  fact,  the  pessimistic  mood  is  logically  reinforced  by 
every  form  of  empirical  science  that  assumes  the  role  of  a  meta- 
physis.  Pessimism  of  the  individual  is  logical,  on  the  ground 
of  every  metaphysic  that  does  not  sustain  the  immeasurable 
value  of  the  individual — the  Christian  as  well  as  the  modern 
estimate  of  the  place  and  worth  of  the  individual — ^by  making 
the  individual  an  organic  member  of  an  infinite  and  absolute 
system.  For  abstract  individualism,  neither  science  nor  ethics, 
nor  sociology,  nor  philosophy  have  any  place.  But  for  the 
concrete  individual — for  the  infinite  worth  of  the  individual 
that  is  not  an  abstract  finite  separate  self — for  the  nidividual 
as  Christianity  contemplates  him  as  an  organic  member  of  the 
Kingdom  of  God,  who  ruleth  over  and  in  all,  there  is  no  place 
found  by  science  in  any  of  its  empirical  forms,  masquerading  as 
a  sufficient  explanation  of  the  whole  concrete  of  experience. 
To  put  this  technically,  it  is  because  all  forms  of  science — from 
mathematical  physics  to  the  historical  view,  move  in  the  realm 
of  relativity.  They  use  the  categories  of  the  relative  and  not 
that  of  the  self-related.  And  it  is  only  in  the  organic  sphere  of 
the  free,  the  self-related,  that  there  can  be  found  a  valid  ground 
for  the  infinite  worth  of  the  finite  individual,  and  for  the  hope 
that,  logically,  banishes  pessimism.  To  be  without  God  is,  log- 
ically, to  be  without  hope,  without  any  justification  for  the 
modern  and  Christian  judgment  of  value  of  the  individual. 
That  is,  the  individual  who  cannot  realize  his  identity,  his 
organic  unity  with  the  supreme  principle  of  the  universe  as 
good  and  true,  can  have  but  a  temporary  and  foolish  optimism 
as  to  his  own  high  worth  and  destiny. 

(a)  Modern  science,  when  it  assumes  an  ontological  role, 
certainly  destroys  all  logical  grounds  for  the  modern  concep- 
tion of  the  place  and  worth  of  the  individual.  Physical  sci- 
ence in  this  role  is  an  impersonal  physical  pantheism. 

(&)  Again,  in  the  moral  institutions  of  humanity,  as  ex- 
plained by  the  historical  school,  though  the  individual  gets  a 
place  and  a  filling,  the  logical  judgment  must  be  pessimistic. 


214  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

In  the  family,  in  the  state,  in  all  institutions  o£  human  culture, 
the  individual  becomes  relatively  concrete  and  developed.  But, 
then,  humanity  in  all  its  educational  and  moralizing  forms  is 
itself  merely  relative.  It  is  not  complete,  independent.  Causa 
sui.  It  is  relative  to  an  other  that  it  is  not  itself.  Taken  in  its 
highest  ethical  and  altruistic  form,  the  religion  of  humanity,  of 
positivism,  it  is  still  in  the  realm  of  finitude  and  relativity,  and 
cannot  guarantee  the  infinite  worth  and  destiny  of  the  indi- 
vidual or  of  the  whole  organism  of  humanity  itself.  There  can 
be  no  worship  of  the  finite  and  relative,  however  large  and  long- 
lived  that  finite  may  be.  Nor  can  any  multi-magnified,  poly- 
million  age  enduring  organism  guarantee  any  everlasting  life. 

The  finite — physical  and  ethical — bulk  it  as  large  as  imagi- 
nation can  picture — is  always  relative  and  dependent.  There  is 
always  an  other,  an  environment  that  bounds  and  limits  it,  so 
that  it  can  have  no  true  independence  and  no  real  efficient  or 
final  causality,  till  it  is  seen  to  be  organically  connected  with  a 
higher,  spiritual  environment.  Not  till  its  finitude  and  depen- 
dency can  be  seen  to  be  that  of  a  member  of  the  total  system  of 
the  Absolute — not  till  it  can  be  seen  to  be  potentially  identical  in 
principle  with  the  Absolute,  has  it  any  guarantee  of  its  own 
worth  and  destiny.  It  is  one  of  the  demonstrations  of  philoso- 
phy, as  it  has  ever  been  one  of  the  realized  faiths  of  religion, 
that  "the  finite,  is  capable  of  the  infinite" — not,  indeed,  as  an  ab- 
stract finite,  but  as  a  finite  in  organic  relation  with  the  infinite, 
or  as  a  member  through  which  pulsates  the  life  of  the  whole. 
To  make  the  other,  that  which  humanity  finds  other  and  op- 
posed to  itself,  to  be  a  physical  universe,  may  give  a  world  of 
physical  and  moral  struggle  of  existence,  but  till  that  "other"  is 
seen  to  be  God,  struggle  and  not  victory  is  the  only  possible 
judgment.  To  make  the  whole  known  and  knowable  of  experi- 
ence, to  have  as  its  limiting  "other"  the  Unknowable,  kith  and 
kinship  with  which,  being  an  unwarranted  assumption,  as 
Spencer  does,  is  to  create  a  dualism  that  negates  independence. 

One  may  safely  challenge  any  form  of  empiricism  for  a 


THE  HISTORICAL  METHOD  2IS 

justification  of  the  judgments  of  progress  and  optimism.  And 
one  may  safely,  without  any  danger  of  refutation,  challenge 
any  form  of  science  that  assumes  to  be  a  sufficient  and  final  ex- 
planation of  experience,  to  deny  the  charge  that  it  has  no 
place  for  God,  freedom  and  immortality.  It  is  simply  and 
absolutely  impossible  for  it  to  do  so  logically,  because  the 
categories  with  which  it  works  are  those  of  the  finite,  the  rela- 
tive, the  dependent.  It  is  not  till  we  criticise  these  categories 
into  the  ultimate  one  of  Self-Consciousness;  till  we  see  these 
categories  of  quantity  and  relations  criticise  themselves  into 
the  category  of  the  self-related — the  independent,  the  total  sys- 
tem, as  mind  or  spirit,  that  we  can  have  any  full  rational  ex- 
planation, of  either  physical  nature  or  of  humanity's  whence, 
where  and  whither.  Scientific  men  are  justly  and  logically  ag- 
nostic, from  the  viewpoint  of  science.  Science,  as  science,  has 
no  need  of  the  hypothesis  of  the  ideals  of  humanity,  however 
much  men  of  science  may  and  do  have  them.  But  they  have 
them  when  they  recognize  the  limits  of  science,  and  also  allow 
thought  to  have  its  perfect  work  and  full  fruition  in  the  absolute 
objectivity  of  spirit,  as  the  genesis  and  goal  of  the  whole  proc- 
ess of  the  physical  universe. 

Theists  may  and  must  accept  all  the  demonstrated  results 
of  mechanical  science  and  of  the  historical  method,  and  scien- 
tific men  may  and  must  accept  all  the  fundamental  principles 
of  religion  and  philosophy,  i.  e.,  whenever  they  think  the  thing 
through,  or  see  the  self-criticism  of  the  lower  categories  into 
the  ultimate  one  of  Self-consciousness. 

Finally  we  may  say  that  the  dialectic  of  thought  forces  us 
from  the  categories  of  physical  science  and  of  the  historical 
method  to  the  ultimate  one  of  thought — that  is — well,  let  us  put 
it  frankly — to  God — from,  through  and  to  Whom  are  all  things 
finite,  and  in  Whom  they  all  find  their  function  and  worth. 
That,  and  not  matter,  force,  ether,  electricity,  or  any  more  re- 
fined form  of  the  ultimate  world-stuflf  is  the  only  sufficient  First 
Principle  of  an  ontological  explanation  of  all  phases  of  the  proc- 


2i6  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

ess  of  the  finite.  Than  self-consciousness  or  personality  there  is 
nothing  higher  in  thought  or  being.  Only  in  Absolute  Person- 
ality are  thought  and  being,  the  real  and  the  rational  identical. 
Nothing  sub-personal  is  a  sufficient  First  Principle  of  explana- 
tion, and  nothing  can  be  supra-personal  except  as  a  fuller  hu- 
man apprehension  of  the  Personal,  above  all  the  limitations  of 
finite  personality.  Thought,  mind,  self-consciousness,  person- 
ality being  thus  the  loftiest  ne  plus  ultra  principle,  becomes  the 
ultimate  principle  of  explanation  of  both  nature  and  humanity. 
Thus  the  science  of  nature  and  of  history  must  be  supplemented 
or  rather  fulfilled  by  a  philosophy  of  nature,  and  a  philosophy 
of  history.  But  these  can  never  be  merely  abstract.  They  only 
give  the  form  while  science  and  history  give  the  data  for  the  fill- 
ing. In  this  sense  they  are  always  dependent  upon  science  and 
history.  At  best  they  can  take  the  data  up  to  date,  and  interpret 
them  rationally — that  is,  as  stages  in  the  process  of  the  finite 
within  the  Infinite  Form.  Hence  too  new  advances  in  science 
and  new  acquisitions  in  history  compel  a  revision  of  the  details 
as  to  rationality.  Thus  modern  science  compels  philosophy 
(and  philosophy  is  always  speculative,  theoretical  theology)  to 
revise  its  theory  of  creation  and  its  chronology  to  accord  with 
the  theory  of  evolution.  And  the  results  of  the  historical 
method  compel  it  to  revise  its  theory  of  the  jure  divino  origin  of 
State  and  Church  and  all  other  forms  of  moralizing  institutions. 
Only  they  never  do,  and  never  can  compel  its  revision  of  the  ul- 
timate form  of  explanation — the  rationality  of  the  universe, 
whatever  the  new  details  of  the  process  may  be,  as  a  process  of 
becoming  perfect  in  and  through  the  Eternally  Perfect. 

Philosophy  despises  the  cheap  form  of  criticising  any  science, 
as  science  should  despise  the  cheap  form  of  criticising  theology, 
i.  e.,  that  of  holding  up  the  mistakes  of  science ;  of  arraying  the 
exploded  theories  in  physics,  chemistry,  medicine,  geology,  and 
biology  as  proofs  of  their  futility.  Surely  the  historical  method 
applied  to  any  one  of  the  sciences,  reveals  as  lowly  and  gro- 
tesque and  now  unthinkable  forms  through  which  it  has  devel- 


THE  HISTORICAL  METHOD  217 

oped,  as  it  does  when  applied  to  religious  and  ethical  theories 
and  institutions.^  Philosophy  itself  is  above  dates  and  changes. 
But  the  philosophy  of  nature,  of  history  and  of  religion  are  not 
so.  They  are  not  so,  simply  because  they  are  dependent  for  their 
material  upon  the  ever-changing  and  ever-increasing  details  and 
developing  theories  of  science  and  history.  If  it  were  possible 
for  these  ever  to  make  a  full  inventory  and  systematization  of 
their  data — then  a  final  form  of  the  philosophy — that  is — of  the 
whole  process  of  nature  and  history  would  be  possible,  an^  that 
would  be  a  rational  explanation  that  would  be  a  Theodicy- 
justification  of  the  ways  of  God  in  the  process. 

*  Cf.  Appendix,  note  7. 


CHAPTER  V 

ECCLESIASTICAL  IMPEDIMENTA* 
Two  facts  are  patent  to-day — the  decay  and  the  vitaHty  of 
ecclesiasticism.  Both  are  really  phases  of  the  religious  life 
instituting  and  nourishing  itself  with  continuity  and  progress 
into  a  vital  organism  of  the  life  of  the  spirit.  The  term  iw- 
pedimenta  is  a  convenient  one  for  describing  the  general  char- 
acteristics of  this  critical  and  vital  movement  of  ecclesiasti- 
cism. We  may  use  it,  first,  in  its  vulgar  sense,  of  those  things 
which  impede  and  are  not  necessary  to  the  being  or  the  well- 
being  of  the  Church ;  secondly  and  chiefly,  in  its  classical  sense 
of  things  which  encumber  but  still  are  necessary,  assisting  as 
well  as  impeding  progress — the  necessary  means  of  subsist- 
ence and  equipment;  the  supplies,  baggage  and  ammunition 
carried  along  with  an  army. 

It  is  evident  that  man  is  by  nature  a  churchman  or  ecclesi- 
ast,  as  well  as  a  political  being.  Ecclesiasticism  is  as  genuine 
and  rational  a  manifestation  of  human  nature  as  domestic  and 
political  institutions.  Any  merely  destructive  criticism  of  the 
Church  is  unhuman,  and  ends  with  pouring  out  the  baby  with 
the  bath,  to  use  the  German  illustration.  Nor  can  we  say  that 
the  whole  mass  must  be  swallowed  uncritically.  We  find  that 
in  opposite  quarters  both  these  terms — ecclesiasticism  and 
criticism — are  in  ill  repute,  as,  indeed,  they  should  be  when 
divorced  from  each  other.  But  they  should  not  seem  to  be 
as  mutually  repugnant  as  water  and  oil.  Both  stand  for  real 
and  necessary  phases  of  an  organic  process.  Both  are,  in 
varying  proportions,  age-old,  and  give  promise  of  being  as 
age-long  as  man's  secular  existence.  They  are  both  necessary 
factors  in  the  ethical  life  of  man.  Ages  of  the  most  absolute 
'  Cf.  a  partial  reprint  from  an  article  in  The  New  World,  September, 
1892. 

218 


ECCLESIASTICAL  IMPEDIMENTA  219 

ecclesiasticism  have  never  been  free  from  some  ferment  of 
the  critical  element,  and  ages  of  the  most  radical  criticism 
have  never  been  without  their  romantic  side. 

The  rational  ideal  to-day  seems  to  be  that  of  a  critical  ec- 
clesiasticism, that  is,  of  a  visible  working  church,  fully  recog- 
nizing the  results  of  the  modern  criticism  of  its  own  historical 
elements,  and  yet  basing  itself  upon  these  criticised  elements 
as  answering  to  human  nature  and  needs  on  their  religious 
side.  Men  of  culture  to-day  cannot  accept  an  ecclesiasticism 
which  has  not  been  through  the  fires  of  criticism,  nor  will  they 
tolerate  mere  negative  critics,  "those  nomads  of  the  intellectual 
world,  who  will  not  permit  any  steady  cultivation  of  the  soil." 
We  must  frankly  and  fairly  apply  all  the  critical  powers  of  the 
human  spirit  to  all  sources  of  information  as  to  the  genesis 
and  growth  of  the  Church,  in  order  to  get  that  concrete  ra- 
tional comprehension  of  it  that  proves  it  to  be  founded  on  the 
very  rock,  against  which  the  gates  of  hell  cannot  prevail.  The 
work  done  in  this  line  during  the  last  century  has  been  pro- 
digious. It  enables  us  to  put  ourselves  in  the  place  of  the 
chief  actors,  of  those  who  have  been  the  mouthpieces  and  the 
toolmen  of  the  nascent  and  developing  Church.  Granting  all 
the  results  of  such  work,  the  question  comes.  Is  the  Church 
worth  preserving?  But  the  vitality  of  the  institution  answers 
the  question  by  continuing  to  exist. 

The  question  may  be  raised  as  to  the  possibility  of  a  critical 
ecclesiasticism,  of  a  church  that  lives  and  thrives  under  criti- 
cism. It  is  at  least  certain  that  we  can  have  critical  ecclesi- 
asts.  Dean  Stanley,  Professor  Edwin  Hatch  and  the  authors 
of  "Lux  Mundi"  show  us  the  union  of  the  two  elements.  No 
critic  was  ever  more  free  and  thorough-going  in  his  study  of 
the  origin  and  growth  of  ecclesiastical  institutions  than  Dean 
Stanley,  and  no  ecclesiast  was  ever  more  heart  and  hand  with 
a  conservative  form  of  the  Church  than  himself.^ 

*  The  bon-mot  of  DTsraeli  is  well  known.    In  an  after-dinner  speech 
Dean  Stanley  inveighed  strongly  against  all  dogmas  in  the  church.    DTs- 


230  THE  FREEDOAI  OF  AUTHORITY 

We  wish  to  say  something  of  the  impedimenta  of  the 
Church — distinguishing  between  those  which  come  under  the 
vulgar  use  of  the  term  and  those  which  come  under  its  clas- 
sical sense.  There  are  two  large  questions,  however,  demand- 
ing at  least  brief  notice  beforehand.  What  is  the  Church? 
and  What  is  the  ideal  of  knowledge  by  which  we  are  to  esti- 
mate it  and  its  impedimental 

The  Church,  considered  as  an  objective  historical  fact,  may 
be  described  as  the  religious  community,  springing  from  and 
embodying  the  religious  self-consciousness  of  Jesus  Christ. 
It  is  the  visible  community  to  which  the  religious  spirit  in  men, 
influenced  by  the  spirit  of  Jesus  Christ,  gave  rise — not  as  an 
absolutely  new  organization,  but  as  having  its  roots  primarily 
in  Judaism,  and,  later  on,  its  branches  in  the  Graeco-Roman 
civilization.  It  is  the  institution  which  the  new  leaven  worked 
in  the  social  lump  coming  under  its  influence.  It  is  visible, 
one,  organic  and  continuous  through  nineteen  centuries.  It 
is  as  objective  a  fact  as  a  continent  or  a  nation.  It  is  some- 
thing to  be  reckoned  with  in  making  an  inventory  of  concrete 
human  nature  or  reason,  regardless  of  any  a  priori  theories 
as  to  the  method  of  its  organization.  As  an  organism  it  has 
functions.  It  exists  for  the  edification  of  its  members,  and 
for  propagation,  or  conquering  by  disciplining  ail  foes.  Hence 
it  has  an  official  organization  of  life,  doctrine  and  worship. 
It  grew,  and  it  still  grows,  and  demands  appreciative  interpre- 
tation. After  all  the  work  of  critical  and  historical  investi- 
gations as  to  the  how  and  why  of  its  various  external  forms, 
comes  the  deeper  task  of  rational  estimation.  We  need  be 
bound  by  no  traditional  views  of  its  historical  genesis  and  vari- 
ations, but  may  accept  the  general  results  of  modem  scientific 
investigation  on  these  points.  The  organization  of  the  early 
Christian  Churches  and  their  consolidation  into  the  Catholic 


raeli  nudged  him  and  said,  "Yes,  Dean,  but  then  you  must  remember  that 
no  dogma  means  no  Dean." 


ECCLESIASTICAL  IMPEDIMENTA  221 

Church  under  Constantine,  are  matters  of  history  pretty  well 
understood.  In  every  way  the  Church  is  open  to  as  free  his- 
torical investigation  as  any  other  religious,  social  or  political 
organization.  We  must  take  it  for  what  it  is,  and  for  what 
it  has  been,  rather  than  yield  to  the  assumptions  of  either  an 
abstract  supernaturalism  or  an  equally  abstract  intellectualism. 

What  the  Church  is  for  us,  depends  upon  our  ideal  of 
knowledge.  Here  again  we  must  claim  to  be  passing  beyond 
the  eighteenth,  yes,  and  largely  the  nineteenth  century's  ab- 
stract conception  of  reason.  Under  that  conception  there  was 
no  suspicion  that  even  reason  is  a  development;  that  it  never 
has  existed  as  an  inborn  finished  codex  of  clear,  fixed  notions. 
Still  less  could  these  rationalists  apprehend  the  conception 
that  the  truths  of  reason  have  been  developed  only  through 
institutional  forms  of  human  activity;  that  every  category 
which  is  now  used  has  had  a  history  of  incarnation,  and  that 
the  highest  spiritual  truths  are  the  most  elaborate  products 
of  a  long  process  of  the  developing  impulse  of  the  human 
spirit.  Hence,  with  their  shallow  intellectual  criticism,  they 
could  never  penetrate  to  any  rational  understanding  of  ecclesi- 
asticism  as  one  of  the  forms  of  the  real  in  which  the  rational 
— that  is,  human  nature  in  its  highest  sense — was  realizing 
itself. 

What  human  nature  or  reason  is,  is  to  be  learned  only  from 
human  history.  The  ideal  of  knowledge  on  this  plane  should 
then  be  a  concrete  view  of  the  human  spirit  developing  in  the 
various  spheres  of  its  activity.  To  the  query,  What  is  truth? 
the  old  rationalism  answered  confidently,  logical,  intellectual 
form  for  the  individual.  Now  the  answer  should  be,  that  hu- 
man reason  to  date  is  the  organic  sum  total  of  the  aesthetic, 
ethical,  religious,  scientific  and  philosophical  manifestations 
of  the  human  spirit.  The  impulse  to  rationality  in  man  has 
not  confined  itself  to  the  channel  of  the  logical  understanding. 
Its  generous  flood  has  made  other  and  deeper  channels,  and 
left  aesthetical,  ethical  and  religious  categories  as  monuments 


222  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

of  its  self-manifestation.  Hence,  in  treating  of  ecclesiastical 
impedimenta,  we  should  recognize  the  absurdity  of  misapply- 
ing the  canons  of  logical  truth.  Granted  that  these  canons  of 
formal  truths  have  been  developed  out  of  the  impulse  of  our 
mind  toward  logical  knowledge,  and  toward  bringing  phe- 
nomena to  unity,  we  must  also  grant  that  religion  rises  out  of 
an  impulse  to  establish  a  right  relation  between  ouselves  and 
God.  The  Church,  no  less  than  logic  and  science,  rises  out 
of  an  invincible  need  of  human  nature,  and  as  such  is  a  mani- 
festation of  its  progressive  rationality.  It  can  no  more  ra- 
tionally be  called  a  disease  or  a  perversion  than  the  other  mani- 
festations. Is  there  any  need  of  a  Church?  Human  nature 
has  given  the  affirmative  answer,  historically.  Is  the  Church  a 
member  of  the  civic  order  of  the  nation?  The  same  answer 
is  given  by  history.  Is  it  a  development  of  the  impulse  to 
rationality?  Yes,  or  else  nothing  is,  and  we  have  absolute 
agnosticism  instead  of  an  ideal  of  knowledge. 

We  are  exceedingly  far  from  identifying  the  truth  of  ec- 
clesiasticism  with  all  truth,  or  of  giving  it  an  undue  suprem- 
acy. It  is  much  better  and  quite  proper  to  distinguish  the 
Church  from  the  Kingdom  of  God.  We  may  well  use  this 
latter  term  for  the  organic  sum  total  of  the  developments  of 
the  human  spirit  in  all  phases  of  its  activity.  It  is  one  with 
our  ideal  of  reality.  It  is  reason  so  far  as  it  has  been  incar- 
nate. But  it  is  therefore  far  too  broad  and  developed  a  form 
to  apply  to  ecclesiasticism  in  testing  its  impedimenta.  That 
would  be  measuring  the  part  by  the  whole.  The  Church  is 
not  even  identical  with  moral  and  spiritual  goodness  wherever 
found.  It  is  a  definite,  visible  organization,  though  a  very 
real  and  lively  member  of  that  total  organization  of  the  true, 
the  good  and  the  beautiful  among  men  which  we  term  the 
Kingdom  of  God.  It  exists,  not  to  teach  formal  logical  truth, 
or  natural  science,  or  even  aesthetics  and  ethics,  though  its  mis- 
sion is  much  more  akin  to  these  latter  two,  and  its  kind  of  re- 
ality to  theirs.     It  seeks  to  elevate  man  above  time  and  sense 


ECCLESIASTICAL  IMPEDIMENTA  223 

relations  into  communion  with  the  eternal  fountain  of  life,  and 
to  do  this  through  maintaining  an  ethical  communion  of  its 
members  in  this  effort. 

Hence  its  teaching  must  be  largely  symbolical,  using  lit- 
eral time-and-space  things  in  a  transcendent  sense,  and  thus 
rendering  void  all  merely  literal  criticism  of  its  symbols.  Its 
reality  is  the  ideal  of  perfect  piety,  of  a  communion  of  saints, 
and  not  that  of  common  rationalism,  nor  even  of  a  philosophy 
of  religion.  It  has  little  to  do  with  dry,  unveiled  literalism. 
The  vulgar  rationalism  still  lingering  among  us  to-day  is  de- 
void of  the  historical  and  the  humane  spirit.  It  despises  all 
symbolical  acts,  and  cannot  understand  a  cult,  which  is  essen- 
tial to  the  edification  of  the  Church  in  worship.  It  cannot 
understand  dogma,  which  is  the  essential  intellectual  work  of 
the  Church  in  defining  its  supersensuous  reality.  It  cannot 
understand  its  sacred  literature,  and,  using  its  own  canons,  it 
cannot  understand  any  literature  beyond  that  of  the  multipli- 
cation table  and  the  syllogism.  It  can  partially  understand  its 
polity,  but  only  to  hate  it  for  being  an  efficient  means  of  main- 
taining and  propagating  itself  m  its  role  of  the  educator  of  the 
race  in  the  communal  religious  life.  It  would  also  dispense 
with  the  historical  basis  for  the  world's  evangelization,  and 
with  all  incorporations  of  the  ideal  in  living  forms  and  marked 
typical  events  of  history.  Given  its  way,  it  would  either  dis- 
pense wholly  with  the  Church,  or  endeavor  to  manufacture 
one  which  would  be  no  Church,  and  would  afford  no  home  for 
the  religious  life. 

The  Church  knows  what  edifies,  and  its  strenuous  main- 
tenance of  these  means  is  justified  by  the  power  which  they 
have  given  it  to  live  and  grow.  This  is  one  of  the  most  prac- 
tical of  all  tests  of  the  reality  of  an  organism.  Treat  art  as 
the  old  rationalism  would  treat  religion,  and  it  would  vanish 
away  from  among  men.  We  should  ask  what  the  Church  has 
done  in  the  world  and  what  it  is  now  doing,  and  take  the  most 
objective  of  all  judgments,  that  of  history,  as  to  its  being  a 


224  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

genuine  world-power,  manifesting  and  promoting  the  great 
reality  which  all  religion  seeks.  Thus,  in  studying  ecclesiasti- 
cism,  one  should  reflect  on  the  nature  of  religion  itself,  its 
own  proper  idea  and  function  in  the  complex  of  human  na- 
ture's activity,  as  well  as  upon  the  ground  for  its  appearance 
in  this  or  that  form,  in  order  to  appreciate,  and  thus  only  to  un- 
derstand it.  As  an  objective  reality,  the  Church  and  her  ways 
stand  as  a  marvel  of  unconscious  logic  realizing  itself  in  his- 
tory. Only  an  a  priori  hatred  of  religion,  which  pessimistic- 
ally sees  in  it  nothing  more  than  a  prolonged  disease  of  human 
nature,  can  treat  this  objective  institution  with  disrespect. 
And  only  a  barren  intellectualism  will  insist  on  criticising  it 
by  other  canons  than  those  of  its  own  nature  and  function. 

I.  Are  there,  then,  no  ecclesiastical  impedimenta,  in  the 
vulgar  sense  of  the  term — is  there  no  negative  criticism  of  the 
Church?  Is  not  our  criticism  like  Balaam's  curse? — "I  called 
thee  to  curse  mine  enemies,  and,  behold,  thou  hast  altogether 
blessed  them."  We  have,  indeed,  thus  far  sought  to  ward  off 
the  irrational  subjective  criticism  which  is  so  plentiful.  We 
need  not,  however,  shun  full  criticism  of  the  impedimenta  that 
hinder  the  Church  from  fulfilling  its  own  true  mission.  We 
only  insist  that  these  can  merely  be  such  as  are  foreign  to  its 
genius,  or  have  outgrown  their  usefulness.  Taking  the 
Church's  ideal  and  mission,  many  things  can  be  pointed  out 
as  being  useless  and  injurious  hindrances.  The  Church  mili- 
tant is  not  the  Church  triumphant.  Its  follies  and  sins  are 
patent  in  all  ages.  But  the  same  is  true  of  every  other  insti- 
tution. The  political  history  of  the  race  is  full  of  errors  and 
crimes.  The  evils  of  the  law  are  enormous.  And  yet  we 
would  not  abolish  the  state  or  law.  The  history  of  any  one  of 
the  natural  sciences  shows  follies  as  absurd  and  errors  as  in- 
jurious as  can  be  found  in  either  State  or  Church.  The  ideal 
of  any  organization  is  never  realized,  and  yet  the  ideal  only 
comes  into  consciousness  through  the  progressive  realization 


ECCLESIASTICAL  IMPEDIMENTA  225 

of  the  impulse.  The  Church  simply  takes  her  place  with  other 
secular  institutions  in  pleading  guilty  to  such  failures. 

Let  us  frankly  refuse  to  admit  any  real  impediments  to  the 
marriage  of  humanity  with  the  bride  of  Christ.  Let  us  insist 
upon  the  Church  putting  away  all  such  impediments.  The 
critical  and  historical  studies  concerning  the  Church  have 
doubtless  disclosed  a  vast  amount  of  dead,  ecclesiastical  rub- 
bish, trash,  needless  scaffolding,  bric-a-brac,  chips  from  the 
growmg  statue,  decayed  branches  of  the  growing  tree,  suck- 
ers that  are  needlessly  and  criminally  draining  its  strength, 
fungoid  growths,  parasitic  vines,  superfluous  clothing  upon  the 
racer  and  armor  on  the  warrior — things  that  do  not  make  for 
the  edification  or  the  propagation  of  the  Church,  and  which 
the  Church,  nevertheless,  holds  on  to  as  essential.  It  is  a 
sympathetic  and  generous  criticism  which  calls  the  attention 
of  the  Church  to  these  impediments,  many  of  which,  however, 
she  has  encysted  into  innocuous  inactivity. 

Again,  from  the  longest-lived  branch  of  the  Church  to  the 
most  novel  modern  sect,  there  is  not  one  form  that  has  not 
outgrown,  and  of  itself  cast  aside,  much  of  its  earlier  impedi- 
menta. There  has  been  sufficient  of  the  normal  life-power  in 
every  one  to  use  up  much  of  its  supplies  and  to  drop  the  rub- 
bish. That  ecclesiasticism  is  ultra-conservative  is  one  of  the 
facts  of  human  nature  on  that  side  that  is  to  be  taken  into  ac- 
count. Demands  cannot,  therefore,  be  made  upon  it  that 
should  be  made  upon  other  inherently  less  conservative  insti- 
tutions. To  each  according  to  its  nature,  is  certainly  a  canon 
of  rational  criticism.  In  the  long  run  the  Church  discards 
what  does  not,  and  adopts  what  does,  edify.  The  indictment 
against  the  evils  of  conservative  traditionalism  is  made  none 
too  strong  by  even  hostile  critics.  This  temper  has  often  led 
her  champions  to  commit  the  most  glaring  crimes  against 
the  very  foundation  principles  of  morality  and  humanity,  in 
order  to  maintain  the  old  as  the  true,  and  defeat  the  new  as  the 
false.    But  in  the  long  run  it  shows  a  capacity  to  assimilate 

IS 


236  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

the  best  elements  of  the  Ufe  of  any  age,  toward  the  close  of 
that  age,  and  to  renounce  its  own  defects  and  malformations 
on  its  way  to  new  and  fuller  life.  It  has  life.  Hence  we  find 
in  every  form,  the  normal,  though  tardy  process  of  excretion 
going  along  with  that  of  assimilation.  Volumes  would  be 
needed  to  catalogue  the  mass  of  impedimenta  thus  discarded. 
We  must  decline  to  renew  the  task  here  which  has  already  been 
accomplished  by  friend  and  foe.  From  the  dropping  by  the 
early  Church  of  the  rites  of  foot-washing  and  the  Agapae  in- 
stituted by  Christ  himself,  to  the  change  from  hooks  and 
eyes  to  buttons  by  the  Dunkards,  perpetual  changes  through 
additions  and  subtractions  have  been  going  on  within  this  or- 
ganic body,  moved  by  its  own  vital,  semi-unconscious  ideal 
of  reality. 

The  form  and  the  interpretation  of  her  sacred  literature, 
her  sacraments,  her  ceremonies  and  ritual,  her  organization 
and  her  creeds,  have  undergone  wondrous  changes,  consider- 
ing the  inherent  conservatism  of  the  Church.  The  Episcopal 
Church  has  practically  discarded  her  once  dominant  standard 
of  the  XXXIX  Articles  as  "forty  stripes  save  one."  The 
Preface  to  the  Prayer  Book  sets  forth,  as  the  rule  for  all  such 
changes,  "that  which  may  seem  most  convenient  for  the  edi- 
fication of  the  people  according  to  the  various  exigencies  of 
the  times  and  occasions,"  "seeking  to  keep  the  happy  mean  be- 
tween too  much  stiffness  in  refusing,  and  too  much  easiness 
in  admitting,  variations  in  things  once  advisedly  established," 
although  "in  their  own  nature  indifferent  and  alterable,"  al- 
ways allowing  "such  just  and  favorable  construction  as  in 
common  equity  ought  to  be  allowed  to  all  human  writings." 
The  decision  of  the  Church  of  Rome  in  regard  to  the  novel 
"Faribault  example,"  as  well  as  the  recognition  of  the  Republic 
in  France,  and  the  Encyclical  on  the  labor  question,  illustrate 
the  tardy  but  generally  forthcoming  adaptation  of  the  most 
ultra-conservative  form  of  the  Church  to  the  needs  of  the 
times.     Ample  apology,  however,  could  easily  be  made  for  the 


ECCLESIASTICAL  IMPEDIMENTA  227 

Church's  tardiness  in  all  such  matters.  Conservatism  is  bound 
up  with  her  very  life  and  with  her  power  to  fulfill  her  mission. 

Again,  criticism  of  impedimenta  from  within  the  Church 
itself,  is  affected  by  her  relatively  peaceful  or  militant  condi- 
tion. Her  general  attitude  is  that  of  the  Church  militant — 
an  army  always  preparing  for  contest  even  when  in  secure 
camp  or  fortress,  A  Church  passing  through  a  reformation, 
like  a  ship  in  a  storm  or  an  athlete  in  a  race,  will  spontaneously 
cast  aside  as  real  impediments  many  of  the  articles  of  luxury 
and  of  relative  necessity  in  times  of  peace.  Baggage  will  be 
thrown  into  the  furnace  for  fuel,  or  cast  overboard  to  lighten 
the  vessel,  which  otherwise  forms  a  part  of  its  precious  cargo. 
After  the  storm,  the  race,  the  battle,  much  of  the  discarded 
impedimenta  will  be  recovered  for  renewed  use  in  edifying 
and  propagating  the  Church.  An  ecclesiastical  renaissance 
is  sure  to  follow  an  ecclesiastical  revolution.  Protestant  scho- 
lasticism followed  quite  hard  upon  the  revolt  against  mediaeval 
scholasticism,  and  the  drift  from  a  bald  Protestantism  to  the 
more  constitutional  and  aesthetic  forms  of  church  life  has  been 
going  on  ever  since  the  Reformation.  The  Society  of  Friends, 
starting  with  the  quaking  excitements  of  its  early  converts, 
soon  settled  down  into  a  formalism  of  quiet  informality,  and 
now  furnishes  a  large  number  of  members  to  the  most  litur- 
gical of  the  Protestant  communions.  Unitarianism,  having 
fairly  won  its  negative  victory  against  a  dead  intellectual  or- 
thodoxy, is  likewise  sending  its  large  quota  to  the  same  church. 
The  New  Theology,  now  carrying  on  the  more  constructive 
criticism  of  Calvinism,  claims  to  be  a  theological  renaissance 
rather  than  a  novelty.  Back  to  the  Fathers  and  the  early  and 
mediaeval  Church!  is  the  war  cry  of  the  most  narrow  type  of 
zealots  in  the  Episcopal  Church  to-day,  and  yet  they  have 
enough  truth  to  carry  a  large  part  of  the  interest  of  the  Church 
towards  a  somewhat  needed  ecclesiastical  renaissance. 

Distasteful  as  may  be  the  methods,  spirit  and  ethics  of 
many  of  the  promoters  of  such  a  renaissance  in  our  day,  we 


238  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

may  gladly  have  the  work  done.  However  much  more  con- 
genial one  may  at  times  find  the  intellectual  fellowship  of 
those  who  are  fully  in  touch  with  modern  culture,  he  cannot 
allow  his  taste  to  prevent  him  from  enjoying  his  larger  spirit- 
ual heritage,  and  encouraging  the  renaissance  which  is  to  put 
him  in  touch  with  all  his  spiritual  ancestry.  The  modern 
spirit  has  been  in  danger  of  having  its  interest  so  centred  upon 
local  affairs  as  to  neglect  its  classical  inheritance.  Human- 
ism is  often  a  needed  antidote  to  Philistinism  in  the  Church 
as  well  as  in  literature. 

History,  however,  never  repeats  itself  except  with  a  dif- 
ference. The  healthy  life  of  the  Church  will  make  abortive 
all  attempts  at  a  mere  renaissance  of  any  earlier  form.  In  any 
renaissance  many  new  forces  and  materials  are  added,  many 
of  the  old  forms  are  discarded,  and  the  remnant  is  modified 
and  transmuted  by  the  differing  environing  needs  and  culture. 
The  old  gospel  is  ever  new,  even  in  its  donning  of  ancient 
garb.  It  is  impossible  to  specify  in  detail  the  amount  and  sort 
of  ecclesiastical  rubbish  thus  discarded.  This  would  require 
a  history  of  each  great  branch,  and  of  every  minor  form  of 
ecclesiastical  organization.  Hooks  and  eyes  may  be  dropped 
for  modern  buttons,  but  days  of  luxurious  peace  may  come 
when  the  old  hooks  and  eyes  will  regain  their  place,  though 
they  will  then  be  made  of  pure  gold.  The  use  or  disuse  of 
all  such  unessential  impedimenta  must  be  left  to  the  taste,  in- 
tellectual and  moral  as  well  as  aesthetic,  of  the  various  socie- 
ties. 

Doctrinaries  of  Liberalism  and  Puritanism  alike  in  their 
Philistinism  would  strip  the  Church  bare  of  decent  clothing. 
Both  are  utterly  unappreciative  of  the  sentiment  and  symbol- 
ism that  are  inseparable  from  the  instituted  form  of  the  re- 
ligious life.  In  vain  will  they  attempt  to  unclothe  historical 
Christianity,  by  setting  up  the  literal  form  of  the  anti-ecclesi- 
astical religion  of  the  Christ  when  on  earth.  In  vain  will  they 
stigmatize  as  "baptized  Paganism,"  and  "caricatures  of  the 


ECCLESIASTICAL  IMPEDIMENTA  229 

holiest,"  the  concrete  forms  of  the  Hving  Church,  which  claims 
to  be  the  extension  of  the  Incarnation,  the  Christ  widened  into 
the  concrete  life  of  the  community.  They  denounce  the  letter 
of  the  Church  against  the  spirit  of  the  Gospel,  being  incap- 
able of  appreciating  the  spirit  of  the  letter  of  the  Church,  the 
aesthetic  and  edifying  side  of  ecclesiastical  symbolism.  Once 
an  infant,  always  and  infant,  expresses  the  unhistorical  Puri- 
tanic view  of  Christianity.  "The  invisible  Church"  is  another 
term  for  the  same  abstract  view  of  Christianity.  This  answers 
to  the  conception  of  an  unincarnate  soul  in  this  world.  It  is  a 
contradiction  of  terms.  For  what  is  invisible  is  not  actually 
the  Church,  and  what  is  the  Church  is  not  invisible.  Even  the 
largest  term  for  human  reason,  "the  Kingdom  of  God,"  as 
the  organic  sum  total  of  the  work  of  the  human  spirit  under 
divine  education,  is  not  without  visible  embodiments.  The 
term  "ethical  Christianity"  is  another  abstraction  supposed  to 
represent  the  real  elements  of  Christianity.  But  the  subjec- 
tive ethical  is  itself  the  product  of  the  objective  ethos  of  the 
community,  of  its  manners,  customs  and  clothes.  The  ethical 
is  the  social,  even  in  Christianity.  It  is  expressed  Christianity, 
the  leavened  lump. 

II.  This  concrete,  historical,  objective  view  of  Christian- 
ity brings  us  to  the  second  or  classical  sense  of  the  term  im- 
pedimenta, as  those  things  which  encumber  but  still  are  neces- 
sary to  existence  and  progress,  the  necessary  means  of  subsist- 
ence and  of  armament  of  the  Church  militant.  For  the  double 
purpose  of  self-edification  and  self-propagation,  the  Church 
has  always  found  that  it  needs  an  official  organization  of  its 
life,  teaching  and  worship.  The  intrinsic  difference  between 
an  army  and  the  character,  functions  and  end  of  the  Church 
necessitate  a  somewhat  broader  use  of  the  term  impedimenta. 
To  abbreviate  the  matter  without  refining  too  much,  let  us 
take  the  Declaration  of  the  House  of  Bishops  in  the  General 
Convention  of  1886,  and  of  the  "Lambeth  Conference  of  Bish- 


230  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

ops  of  the  Anglican  Communion"  in  1888,  as  stating  the  es- 
sential impedimenta  of  the  Catholic  Church,  viz. : — 

1.  The  Holy  Scriptures  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments,  as  "con- 
taining all  things  necessary  to  salvation,"  and  as  being  the  rule  and 
ultimate  standard  of  faith. 

2.  The  Apostles'  Creed,  as  the  Baptismal  Symbol;  and  the  Nicene 
Creed,  as  the  sufficient  statement  of  the  Christian  faith. 

3.  The  two  Sacraments  ordained  by  Christ  himself, — Baptism  and 
the  Supper  of  the  Lord, — ministered  with  unfailing  use  of  Christ's 
words  of  Institution,  and  of  the  elements  ordained  by  him. 

4.  The  Historic  Episcopate,  locally  adapted  in  the  methods  of  its 
administration  to  the  varying  needs  of  the  nations  and  peoples  called 
of  God  into  the  unity  of  his  church. 

To  substantiate  these  positions  in  brief,  appeal  can  be  made 
from  all  subjective  tastes  and  local  and  temporary  prejudices, 
to  the  objective  judgment  of  history.  The  history  of  the 
Church  is  the  judgment  of  the  Church.  The  organic  force  of 
the  new  leaven,  the  extension  of  the  Incarnation,  has  always 
and  everywhere  manifested  itself,  edified  itself  and  propagated 
itself  through  these  channels.  We  have  here  two  classes  of 
impedimenta:  ist,  those  which  minister  to  the  edification  of 
the  body — the  Holy  Scriptures  and  the  Sacraments;  and  2d, 
those  which  minister  to  its  extension — the  creed  and  polity  of 
the  Church.  In  some  form,  these  essential  impedimenta  are 
found  in  every  branch  and  sect  of  the  Church.  The  test  is, 
what  administers  to  edification  and  to  growth?  The  instinc- 
tive logic  of  the  vital  organism  of  the  Church  has  always  found 
these  four  points  to  be  essential.  Surely  the  Church  is  suffi- 
ciently able  to  speak  for  itself.  Surely  its  presence  in  history 
as  one  of  the  greatest  institutions  of  the  human  spirit  is  pow- 
erful and  great  enough  to  warn  off  any  external  abstract  judg- 
ment as  to  what  is  essential  to  it.  To  be  a  world-power,  it 
claims  that  it  must  be  catholic  in  length  as  well  as  breadth. 
It  therefore  rightly  denies  the  rationality  of  utterly  moderniz- 
ing the  Church.  It  demands  continuity  in  these  four  essen- 
tials. 


ECCLESIASTICAL  IMPEDIMENTA  231 

We  must  grant  that  religious  experience  is  only  one  ex- 
tract out  of  the  whole  circle  of  the  contents  of  human  effort ; 
that  the  Kingdom  of  God  is  the  truly  catholic  manifestation 
of  human  nature:  but  taking  this  limited  range  of  ecclesiasti- 
cism,  we  must  claim  for  it  that  the  present  Christian  conscious- 
ness forms  but  a  small  part  of  the  catholic  Christian  conscious- 
ness. That  of  every  age  has  been  modified  by  the  larger  con- 
sciousness of  humanity  in  all  the  range  of  its  experience. 
Every  age  has  the  defects  of  its  own  virtues.  Let  us  recog- 
nize all  the  virtues  of  our  own  age,  but  not  mistake  them  for 
the  total  of  those  of  many  ages.  "Modern  culture"  is  a  con- 
venient term  for  housing  the  results  of  human  nature's  con- 
quests in  the  later  centuries.  But  the  very  word  "modern" 
defines  it  as  a  limited  culture.  The  scientific  and  historical 
and  critical  and  social  and  philosophical  acquirements  of  the 
times  are  not  the  manifestations  of  the  whole  of  human  nature. 
Ecclesiasticism  is  also  a  part  of  this  complex.  Men  may  very 
wrongfully  and  irrationally  repudiate  their  connection  with 
the  past,  but  the  Church  does  not.  Its  consciousness  is  age- 
long and  world-wide.  Modern  culture  does  not  meet  all  hu- 
manity's needs,  and  the  Church  claims  its  part  in  this  supply 

Moreover,  it  claims  its  catholic  pedigree.  It  claims  the 
need  of  preserving  the  old  within  its  present  living  fold,  in 
order  to  continuity,  strength  and  expansion.  We  may  adapt 
an  illustration  from  Von  Hartmann.^  In  a  tree,  the  real  life 
from  the  roots  is  found  in  the  present  new  layer.  The  solid 
stem  of  dead  wood  which  defies  the  storm  is  formed  by  the 
earlier  growths.  The  leaves  and  fruitage  of  past  years  help 
towards  this  year's  fruitage  only  as  they  fall  to  the  ground  and 
form  soil  for  the  roots,  while  the  slight  annular  growth  has 
increased  its  girth,  height  and  solidity.  Holding  all  these  in 
the  embrace  of  its  newest  layer  gives  it  expansion  as  well  as 
strength.  Hence  the  first  law  for  the  newly  sprouting  ring  is 
really  to  embrace  and  enfold  all  its  predecessors ;  the  second,  to 

^  Philosophie  des  Unhewussten,  iii. 


232  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

grow  from  the  root  upwards  semi-independently.  Such  has 
been  the  method,  the  unconscious  logic,  of  the  Cathohc  Church. 
Many  of  the  supposed  impedimenta  have  really  been  encysted 
to  give  strength  and  expansion,  and  all  the  essential  impedi- 
menta have  been  preserved  in  its  growth  from  the  root  upward, 
— a.  catholic  polity,  creed,  sacraments,  and  sacred  literature. 

No  criticism  can  destroy  these  four  facts  done  into  history 
by  the  Church.  Open  as  they  are  to  the  most  free  investiga- 
tion of  their  historical  how,  when  and  why,  they  still  remain 
as  essential  impedimenta  of  an  institution  that  must  command 
the  respect  of  all  that  have  respect  for  any  of  the  works  of  man 
under  divine  tutelage.  At  times  and  in  places,  each  one  of 
them  has  been  used  so  as  to  unnecessarily  impede  the  progress 
of  the  church,  as  well  as  of  the  larger  spiritual  realm  of  the 
kingdom  of  God.  Bibliolatry,  sacerdotalism,  orthodoxy  and 
ecclesiasticism,  in  the  vulgar  sense  of  these  terms,  have  sinned 
against  as  well  as  served  the  religious  edification  of  many  gen- 
rations.  The  criticism  which  removes  the  false  gloss  from 
these  four  facts  seems  powerless  to  destroy  them.  It  can  only 
remove  the  false  abstract,  "Thus  saith  the  Lord,"  before  each 
one  of  them,  to  replace  it  with  a  concrete  historical  vindication 
of  them  as  genuine  works  of  the  Lord. 

It  is  an  old  ecclesiastical  illusion  to  identify  a  divine  origin 
with  a  certain  method  of  that  origin.  It  is  a  modern  delusion 
to  deny  a  divine  origin  to  anything  which  can  be  traced  to  its 
nascent  form  in  the  womb  of  human  nature.  Some  things 
are  divine,  and  no  things  are  divine, — these  are  twin  forms  of 
error  that  the  concrete,  rational  estimate  of  institutions  is  to 
correct.  In  doing  this  work,  it  will  receive  but  scant  thanks 
from  some  in  both  camps.  The  narrow  zealot  and  the  zealous 
liberal  will  each  have  epithets  of  malignity  to  hurl  at  those  who 
seek  to  set  forth  the  objective  rationality  and  divineness  of 
human  institutions.  We  are  familiar,  on  the  one  hand,  with 
such  terms  of  reproach  as  pantheism  and  rationalism,  and 
superstition  and  anthropomorphism  on  the  other  hand.    And 


ECCLESIASTICAL  IMPEDIMENTA  233 

yet  the  work  goes  bravely  and  rapidly  forward,  and  seems 
destined  to  bring  out  the  fuller  inclusive  truth  of  the  body  and 
soul  of  the  progressive  creation  of  man. 

It  is  the  historical  and  practical  estimates,  and  the  changed 
emphasis  of  them,  that  enable  and  compel  us  to  hold  to  these 
four  points  in  a  strictly  non-sectarian  and  super-denomina- 
tional spirit.  We  have  used  the  term  "ecclesiasticism" 
throughout,  only  in  its  rational  sense  of  the  visible  organization 
of  the  Christian  religion.  It  has  not  come  within  our  limits  to 
deal  with  it  in  its  current  vulgar  sense.  Like  the  term  "poli- 
tics," it  is  commonly,  and  fairly  enough  perhaps,  used  to  de- 
note a  perverted  and  vicious  method  and  spirit  in  the  practi- 
cal working  of  the  organization.  The  indictment  against  these 
twin  evils  cannot  well  be  made  too  heavy  or  severe.  The  mere 
ecclesiast  is  always  practically  a  Jesuit,  as  the  mere  politician 
is  a  Machiavellian.  There  is  always  need  of  keeping  alive  a 
vigorous  sentiment  against  them  both,  in  order  to  minimize 
the  evils  connected  with  the  practical  working  of  the  two  great 
rational  and  necessary  forms  of  well-being  in  the  kingdom  of 
God  on  earth — the  Church  and  the  State. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  ETHICS  OF  CREED  CONFORMITY* 

"The  Aversion  of  Men  of  Taste  to  Evangelical  Religion" 
was  the  title  of  a  notable  essay  a  generation  ago.  There  are 
but  few  signs  of  any  abatement  of  that  aversion  yet.  The 
dissonance  of  dissent  makes  fully  as  much  noise  as  the  asso- 
nance of  assent  makes  harmony  in  the  world  of  theological 
dogma  to-day.  Even  the  assent  is  not  as  cordial  as  could  be 
desired.  Many  who  profess  to  like  plenty  of  solid  old  dogmas 
swallow  them  with  wry  faces.  "What  is  the  truth?"  asked 
Lady  Chettam  of  Mrs.  Cadwallader,  in  "Middlemarch."  "The 
truth?  he  is  as  bad  as  the  wrong  physic, — nasty  to  take  and 
sure  to  disagree."  Many,  again,  who  complain  of  the  old  fet- 
ters, are  prepared  to  forge  brand-new  creeds  to  fetter  others 
in  turn.  Others,  more  disgusted,  are  ready  to  apply  to  all 
dogmas  Dr.  O.  W.  Holmes's  jeu  d' esprit  on  medicine :  "Men 
would  be  none  the  worse  off  if  the  whole  materia  medica  were 
dumped  into  the  ocean, — ^but  it  would  be  all  the  worse  for  the 
fish." 

However  striking  all  such  epigrams  may  seem,  they  con- 
tain the  usual  proportion  of  nine-tenths  falsehood  to  one  part 
of  truth.  No  organized  body  of  wisdom  of  any  one  profession 
or  art  could  be  thus  dumped  into  oblivion  without  ruining 
many  and  great  human  interests,  nor  without  making  progress 
to  some  better  form  impossible.  Such  an  iconoclastic  proced- 
ure is,  indeed,  wholly  out  of  sympathy  with  the  regnant  his- 
torical spirit  of  the  day.  What  were  the  wants  and  their  en- 
vironments that  made  such  creeds  and  institutions  grow,  and 
what  are  the  new  wants  and  environments  which  may  be  or- 

'A  partial  reprint  of  an  article  in  TTie  Andover  Review,  July,  1892. 

234 


ETHICS  OF  CREED  CONFORMITY  235 

ganically  related  to  them  in  further  progress?  Such  is  the 
question  which  the  historical  method  puts  to  every  form  of 
human  creed,  profession,  and  institution.  How  did  they  grow, 
evolve,  and  what  is  the  probable  trend  of  their  future  develop- 
ment? Nothing  human  is  alien  to  the  historical  spirit.  It  is 
reverent  in  its  study  of  all  of  anthropology,  in  the  widest  sense 
of  the  term.  The  lowest  forms  of  animal  life  command  the 
utmost  interest  of  students  of  nature,  and  the  lowest  forms  of 
human  thoughts  and  hopes  are  surely  none  the  less  worthy  of 
the  student  of  man.  The  meanest  flower  of  the  human  spirit 
that  blows 

"Can  give 
Thoughts  that  do  often  lie  too  deep  for  tears." 

Surely,  the  historical  spirit  to-day  will  recover  for  us  the  worth 
of  creeds  that  the  vulgar  rationalism  of  an  unhistorical  age 
criticised  almost  to  the  death.  If  not,  the  method  is  untrue 
to  itself,  and  is  not  as  regnant  as  its  claims  to  be. 

The  whole  question  of  the  use  and  abuse  of  creeds  is  very 
far  from  being  a  simple  one.  Creeds  have  a  history,  and  are 
explicable  by  nothing  less  than  all  their  history  of  making  ar- 
ticulate human  needs,  and  furnishing  answers  to  human  wants. 
Humanity  is  an  organism ;  past  and  present,  parent  and  child, 
"crabbed  age  and  youth,"  do  live  together,  so  that  this  twen- 
tieth century  can  only,  at  the  peril  of  its  spiritual  life,  cut  itself 
off  from  that  of  other  ages. 

The  sympathetic  study  of  other  great  world-religions  is 
producing  a  vaster  and  more  complex  appreciation  of  the  spirit 
of  humanity,  and  it  is  but  fair  to  suppose  that  in  due  time  the 
same  spirit  will  rescue  Christianity  from  the  philistines  of 
vulgar  rationalism,  and  recognize  its  immense  significance  as 
a  work  of  the  spirit  which  nothing  but  a  suicidal  unreason  will 
dare  to  ignore.  This  historical  spirit  and  comparative  method 
will  soon  be  busy  in  raising  from  the  deeps  of  oblivion  and 
obloquy  every  form  of  Christian  belief,  not  merely  in  the  way 
of  an  amateur  antiquarianism,  but  with  genuine  interest  in  its 


236  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

own  spiritual  heritage.  It  will  lead  us  to  put  ourselves  in  the 
place  of  all  the  church  doctors  of  creed-making  ages.  Theo- 
retically, at  least,  the  historical  method  has  banished  to  the 
limbo  of  phantoms  the  abstract  individual  who  used  to  be  pa- 
raded as  the  creator  and  monarch  of  himself,  and  has  turned 
its  attention  to  the  social  man  as  a  member  of  an  age-long  and 
world-wide  organism.  It  thus  declines  to  hear  any  individual 
say,  "I  believe,"  and  insists  upon  his  speaking  in  the  plural 
number,  and  for  the  past  as  well  as  present  experience.  We, 
the  church  of  the  ages,  believe.  The  /  always  implies  the  we. 
And  the  present  we  always  implies  the  they  of  previous  gener- 
ations of  Christians.  I,  the  heir  of  nineteen  centuries  of 
Christendom,  believe.  Such  is  the  only  formula  that  the  his- 
torical method  can  permit  any  rational  Christian  to  utter  to- 
day. 

The  historical  method  is  simply  that  of  evolution  applied  to 
the  work  of  the  human  spirit  instead  of  to  nature.  Difference 
of  nature  and  spirit  necessarily  modify  the  method  and  the  re- 
sults in  the  two  cases.  Again,  this  method  cannot  tolerate  any 
would-be  new  creed  makers.  Languages,  institutions,  creeds, 
are  not  made,  they  grow.  Only  topsy-turvy  abnormalities  can 
be  thus  manufactured  instanter.  Nor  will  the  method  permit 
fragments  of  doctrine  to  be  torn  from  their  natal  context  and 
their  organic  place,  by  either  friend  or  foe  of  creed.  It  all 
gp^ew,  and  can  only  be  appreciated  through  a  sympathetic 
study  of  the  history  of  the  organism,  as  a  work  of  the  spirit. 
The  historical  method  is  the  category  of  rationality  in  the  hu- 
manities to-day,  as  that  of  evolution  is  in  science.  It  is  only 
when  this  modern  spirit  is  caught  napping  that  it  will  listen 
to  any  pro  and  con  arguments  based  upon  the  abstract  concep- 
tion of  rationality  of  the  eighteenth  century.  It  is  true  that  no 
one  formula  is  sufficient  to  fully  express  the  spirit  and  method 
of  an  age.  And  yet  formulas  do  give  us  definite  general  meas- 
ures of  various  epochs.  In  the  eighteenth  century,  the  ration- 
alism of  the  mere  understanding  got  the  supremacy,  and  the 


ETHICS  OF  CREED  CONFORMITY  237 

category  then  used  was  that  of  "naturalism,"  which  conceived 
all  things  as  static,  permanent,  distinct.  Innate  ideas,  com- 
mon sense,  natural  religion,  and  immutable  conscience;  the 
rights  of  man,  and  the  uniformity  of  nature,  reason  and  reve- 
lation,— everything  had  the  static  form  that  could  be  weighed, 
measured,  and  defined.  The  criticism  of  the  understanding 
was  considered  to  be  able  to  strip  off  all  the  adventitious  wrap- 
pings and  reveal  their  common  static  elements.  Unhistoricity 
was  the  characteristic  of  its  whole  study  of  human  institutions, 
beliefs,  and  ideals.  Human  nature,  like  nature,  had  been  made 
once  for  all.  Nothing  developed  through  lower  into  higher 
forms.  Change  meant  only  decay.  Even  Christian  apologists 
sought  to  prove  Christianity  by  showing  it  to  be  "as  old  as 
creation"  and  but  a  "republication  of  the  religion  of  nature." 

Where  deism  had  not  thus  devitalized  Christianity,  a  none 
the  less  abstract  and  static  conception  of  revelation  worked  the 
same  evil,  Christianity,  the  Bible,  and  the  Church  were  con- 
ceived of  as  having  been,  once  for  all,  shot  out  of  the  supernal 
heights.  Historical  perspective  was  unknown.  There  was 
really  no  history, — only  events,  natural  and  supernatural.  The 
past  was  studied  in  the  spirit  of  "the  lawyer  searching  for  a 
precedent,  not  that  of  the  historian  who  resuscitates  the  whole 
spirit  and  force  of  a  buried  age,"  in  order  to  understand  his 
own  age.  This  static  conception  of  the  eighteenth  century  was 
also  applied  to  the  reason.  Reason  was  thus  held  to  be  of  a 
certain  definite  magnitude,  consisting  always  of  the  same  fixed, 
clear  conceptions.  This  abstract  form  then  served  as  the 
standard  for  measuring  the  rationality  of  every  kind  of  creed 
and  institution.  There  was  no  conception  of  reason  expanding 
and  developing  under  the  stimulus  of  subjective  needs  and 
changing  environment.  To-day,  however,  we  always  look  for 
the  various  stages  of  the  impulse  to  rationality,  in  different 
ages,  climes,  and  cultures.  Rationality  is  looked  upon  as  an 
historical  process  of  the  inward  impulse.  It  is  not  a  fixed  sum 
of  innate  ideas  or  categories.     Hence  progress  and  continuity, 


238  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

as  well  as  constancy,  are  looked  for  as  elements  of  reason. 
Again,  the  conception  of  reason  as  an  abstract  form,  apart 
from  concrete  historical  institutions,  is  abandoned  to-day. 
Reason  is  rather  the  immanent  formative  form,  present  in  early 
and  late,  in  imperfect  and  temporay  stages  of  state,  church, 
literature,  and  social  life. 

These,  in  their  widely  different  forms,  have  represented 
the  relatively  rational  for  their  respective  times  and  problems, 
and  have  entered,  in  transmuted  form,  as  elements  into  future 
stages  of  the  same.  Past  forms  of  creed  and  cult  are  estimated 
by  their  own  contemporary  situations,  problems,  and  solutions. 
The  Saints  and  the  Fathers,  while  not  appealed  to  as  authorities 
for  us,  are  recognized  as  generally  the  actual  and  rational  au- 
thorities for  their  own  times, — the  mouthpieces  of  the  regnant 
Zeitgeist.  We  endeavor  to  think  what  Augustine  and  Luther 
thought,  not  that  we  may  stop  at  their  thought,  but  that  we 
may  take  it  up  as  an  element  in  the  rational  whole  of  theo- 
logical speculation ;  that  we  may  enter  into  our  Christian  herit- 
age in  order  that  we,  like  them,  may  transmit  it,  in  richer  form, 
to  our  descendants.  This  "historic  sense,"  however,  is  not  yet 
the  common  possession  of  the  clerical  mind.  An  English 
clergyman,  being  asked  his  opinion  of  the  Salvation  Army,  re- 
plied: "Could  any  one  imagine  Jesus  Christ  as  an  officer  of 
such  a  remarkable  organization?"  To  this  it  was  aptly  re- 
plied, that  "a  person  could  as  easily  imagine  Jesus  Christ  as  a 
Salvation  Army  officer,  toiling  in  the  slums  of  London,  as  he 
could  imagine  Him  a  Bishop  or  an  Archbishop,  with  his  five 
thousand  or  twenty-five  thousand  pounds  a  year,  and  a  seat  in 
the  House  of  Lords."  The  historic  sense  enables  one  to 
imagine  both  of  these  positions,  under  different  conditions.  So, 
too,  it  enables  one  to  trace  the  progress  in  Christian  doctrine 
from  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  to  and  through  the  Nicene 
Creed,  and  to  recognize  the  law  of  development,  in  all  this  post 
New  Testament  work.  Cardinal  Newman  thought  that  if  St. 
Athanasius  or  St.  Ambrose  should  suddenly  come  to  life  in  the 


ETHICS  OF  CREED  CONFORMITY  239 

modern  Oxford,  either  of  them  would  find  the  true  church  in 
some  small  Roman  chipel  in  a  forlorn  suburb,  where  mass  was 
said,  rather  than  in  the  ornate  service  of  a  stately  English 
cathedral.  To  this  it  is  replied,  that  if  any  saint  of  the  early 
church  should  suddenly  come  to  life,  knowing  nothing  of  the 
march  of  mind  and  social  life  in  the  interval,  he  might  find 
himself  more  at  home  in  some  small  chapel  which  has  kept 
itself  aloof  from  the  main  current  of  church  life,  and  thus 
been  left  forlorn.  But  if  any  of  the  early  Fathers  had  lived 
through  all  the  great  phases  of  life  and  thought  since  their 
day,  as  we  can  do,  it  is  not  conceivable  that  they  would  reject 
all  the  fruitage  of  these  epochs,  or  refuse  to  enlarge  and  cor- 
rect their  provincial  views,  any  more  than  they  would  refuse 
to  avail  themselves  of  modern  speech,  science,  and  culture. 

With  this  historic  sense,  it  is  we  who  are  the  ancients,  the 
possessors  of  the  wisdom  of  all  former  ages  of  Christian 
thought.  For  us  there  has  been  a  larger  development  of  the 
rationality  of  Christian  doctrine,  a  richer  unfolding  of  the 
content  of  the  Christian  spirit.  The  rational  in  Christian 
thought  for  us  of  to-day  means  the  organic  sum  total  of  the 
efforts  of  the  Christian  spirit  at  self-realization.  We  have 
ample  means  to  free  ourselves  from  all  provincial  philistinism ; 
to  purge  out  all  merely  subjective  views  by  a  large  and  free 
reading  ourselves  into  the  various  points  of  view  in  the  long 
course  of  historical  development  of  Christian  thought.  We 
have  the  means  of  absorbing  all  that  Christian  tradition  has  to 
offer  us,  and  to  recognize  the  various  stages  of  rationality  thus 
presented.  Only  when  we  have  thus  made  ourselves  masters 
of  what  has  gone  before,  have  thought  ourselves  into  the  in- 
sights of  the  world's  great  seers,  have  thoroughly  romanti- 
cized, and  thus  filled  our  empty  selves  with  the  concrete  con- 
tent of  historical  development,  can  we  attain  to  holding  our 
large  heritage  in  a  free  and  independent  manner. 

Let  this  conception  of  the  modern  historical  view  of  ration- 
ality be  applied  to  the  sum  total  of  Christian  creeds,  instead  of 


240  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

the  former  abstract  conception  of  reason,  and  we  shall  have  a 
very  different  sort  of  estimate  of  cree(k  from  that  of  vulgar 
rationalism.  The  whole  question  of  conformity  to  the  creedal 
expression  of  the  historical  Christian  consciousness  as  a  nine- 
teen-century-long  organism  will  appear  in  a  new  light.  We 
are,  of  course,  only  speaking  of  the  conformity  which  concerns 
those  who  consider  themselves  the  most  enlightened  and  intel- 
lectual of  their  fellow-men, — of  those  who  have  been  thor- 
oughly disillusioned  as  to  the  naive,  unreflecting,  and  unques- 
tioning acceptance  of  the  Christian  heritage  that  the  large  part 
of  Christendom  gives.  Such  acceptance,  indeed,  forms  a  part 
of  that  of  the  most  intellectual  sort.  Into  the  religious,  as  into 
the  social  and  intellectual  ethos  of  his  community,  has  each 
individual  been  baptized  and  confirmed, — largely  educated  by 
it.  But  to  the  reflective  spirit,  the  interpretation,  the  relative 
worth  and  emphasis,  of  the  different  parts  will  be  different. 
First  he  will  note  that  creeds  cannot  be  abstracted  from  the 
whole  context  of  the  religious  life  and  organism  without  losing 
their  proper  position  and  significance.  Such  abstraction  is, 
indeed,  necessary  for  this  purpose  of  the  scientific  study  of 
them  as  one  part  of  the  whole  sphere.  Then  he  will  note  that, 
when  thus  abstracted  for  this  purpose,  they  have  order,  per- 
manence, development,  and  continuity,  and  that  they  are  not 
to  be  taken  en  masse.  Creed-making  epochs  will  be  studied  in 
the  sympathetic  spirit  of  the  historical  method,  and  then  in  the 
critical  comparative  methods  of  subsequent  epochs  of  reflec- 
tion. The  thread  of  continuity  will  be  held  on  to  as  he  traces 
the  development  of  the  unspecified  universal,  the  generic 
principle  into  its  particular  organic  phases  under  the  influence 
of  varying  needs  and  environments.  Thus,  much  mere  rub- 
bish will  be  cast  aside, — chips  from  the  block  of  marble  grow- 
ing into  the  statue.  The  death  of  old  forms  will  be  noted  as 
passing  into  the  nascent  forms  of  succeeding  stages. 

"Music,  when  soft  voices  die. 
Vibrates  in  the  memory; 


ETHICS  OF  CREED  CONFORMITY  241 

Odors,  when  sweet  violets  sicken, 
Live  witjbin  the  sense  they  quicken." 

Then  he  will  note  the  difference  between  the  oecumenical  creeds 
of  Christendom  and  the  confessions  of  faith  and  systems  of 
dogma  in  local  branches  of  the  church,  and  the  constant  rela- 
tion of  the  former  to  the  changing  content  of  the  latter.  In 
the  latter,  too,  he  will  seek  not  merely  a  collection  and  classi- 
fication, but  also  a  unification  of  them  through  the  central  or- 
ganic principle  of  Christianity.  His  historical  and  compara- 
tive study  of  them,  as  the  ever  changing  result  of  men's  intel- 
lectual effort  to  formulate  their  religious  experience,  will 
create  the  sympathetic  spirit  of  appreciation  of  at  least  their 
results,  though  the  end  be  not  yet  attained.  He  will  then  be 
prepared  to  reintegrate  them  into  the  whole  concrete  social 
organism  of  Christianity,  as  a  great  institution  developing  from 
"that  holy  thing"  in  the  Virgin's  womb,  which  was  born  into 
the  complex  of  social  and  religious  environment  of  the  Graeco- 
Roman  Empire ;  passing  through  that  of  many  races  and  ages 
since  then, — ever  changing,  ever  developing,  and  yet  ever  con- 
tinuous in  its  organic  life.  The  place  of  tradition,  the  worth 
and  necessity  of  the  great  insights  of  great  Christian  men  and 
epochs,  will  be  fully  recognized,  while  he  will  decline  to  di- 
vorce any  part  of  the  whole  past,  or  of  the  present,  of  Chris- 
tian creed  from  the  central  heart-principle  of  the  Person  of  the 
founder  of  Christianity. 

The  Personality  of  the  Christ  is  the  ultimate  touchstorie  by 
which  we  must  estimate  all  creeds.  They  shall  not  hide  our 
Lord  from  us.  So  far  as  they  reveal  Him,  they  supply  the 
criterion  of  their  own  worth  and  limitations.  But  it  is  this 
divine  Personality  throbbing  through  and  animating  them  all, 
rather  than  as  coming  directly  to  each  individual  Christian, 
that  is  the  touchstone.  The  whole  fabric  is  a  social  organic 
one.  The  portrait  of  the  Master  is  multiform,  and  yet  must 
be  unified  by  the  historical  method.  We  must  place  ourselves 
before  the  Johannine,  the  Petrine,  the  Pauline,  the  Patristic, 

16 


343  -THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

the  Scholastic,  and  the  Protestant  portraits  of  our  Lord,  and 
recognize  his  Hneaments  in  them  all ;  get  as  it  were  a  composite 
photograph  on  the  historical  canvas;  which  preserves  and  en- 
riches any  private  revelation  to  the  soul,  and  furnishes  the 
criteria  for  the  estimate  of  all  single  portraits.  All  Christian 
schemes  of  doctrine  are  but  diverging  streams  flowing  from 
the  one  great  fountain,  going  forth  to  water  the  earth.  They 
represent  the  leaven  of  that  One  Life,  leavening  various  por- 
tion of  the  lump. 

But  Christ  himself  is  greater  than  all  his  resulting  mani- 
festations, greater  than  all  these  portraits,  as  He  was  greater 
than  all  Jewish  Messianic  conceptions  in  his  fulfillment  of 
them.  In  subscribing  to  any  creed,  we  are  only  confessing 
Christ.  Woe  be  to  us  if  He  be  not  greater  than  any  one  of  our 
creeds.  Woe  be  to  us,  also,  if  we  fail  to  appreciate  the  revela- 
tion in  all  of  them.  But  a  greater  woe  upon  us  if  we  stand 
dogmatically  before  any  one  portrait  of  Christ  and  say,  this  is 
the  only  true  and  original  one.  No  revelation  of  Christ  comes 
directly  to  the  individual,  without  the  mediation  of  some  form 
of  sound  doctrine  and  life.  We  are  members  one  of  another 
from  the  very  beginning  of  the  Christian  commonwealth. 
Hence  no  creed  is  of  merely  private  interpretation.  It  repre- 
sents the  corporate  Christian  consciousness  gradually  taking 
explicit  and  developing  form.  The  germ,  the  generic  leaven, 
is  the  historical  Christ  of  the  New  Testament.  Starting  from 
this  norm,  the  historical  method  traces  the  unity  and  contin- 
uity in  all  the  diverse  forms  of  development  and  of  creedal 
statement.  Any  development  that  results  in  the  very  opposite 
of  its  beginning,  is  abnormal  and  false ;  and  any  form  that 
grows  dogmatically  rigid  becomes  lifeless  and  sterile.  The 
historic  Christ  and  all  succeeding  secular  environments  of  the 
Christian  life  give  the  total  of  elements  to  be  considered  in 
testing  the  genuineness  and  worth  of  any  creedal  development. 
To-day  it  is  only  the  new  which  is  indissolubly  and  organically 
connected  with  the  old,  that  is  true  in  Christian  doctrine.    Other 


ETHICS  OF  CREED  CONFORMITY  243 

sort  of  rationality  is  beyond  the  pale  of  the  genuine  historical 
method.  It  is  equally  irrational  to  seek  to  stereotype  Chris- 
tion  thought  according  to  the  form  of  the  first,  the  fourth,  or 
the  sixteenth  century,  or  to  seek  to  make  a  brand-new  creed  for 
the  twentieth  century.  The  old  and  the  new  can  alone  give  us 
the  true  for  to-day.  Our  minds  must  be  both  attached  to  and 
detached  from  bygone  formulas.  To  esteem  only  our  present 
provincial  view  as  the  truth,  is  as  great  and  soul-destroying  an 
error  as  to  esteem  a  bygone  view  as  ultimate.  The  deadliest 
of  all  heresies  against  reason  is  that  which  limits  it  to  one  age 
or  one  type  of  thought.  What  more  absurd  form  of  irrational- 
ity can  be  imagined  to-day  than  that  which  modern  orthodoxy 
till  recently  made  as  to  creed  subscription.  Put  in  its  naked 
form,  the  demand  was  this :  Christianity  is  essentially  doctrine. 
Here  are  the  only  ortho-dogmata.  Each  individual  must  yield 
unfeigned  assent  to  their  literal  form  from  personal  insight 
into  their  truth,  all  historical  perspective  aside.  It  thus  has 
reverted  to  either  scholastic  fetters  or  to  antinomian  individ- 
ualism. In  the  latter  and  ultimate  form  of  orthodaxy,  it  must 
result  in  the  individual  isolating  himself  from  all  ecclesiastical 
inclosures  and  making  a  new  one  for  himself. 

The  old  Scotch  woman  doubted  of  the  orthodoxy  of  all 
except  herself  and  her  Donald,  and  sometimes,  she  said,  she 
doubted  if  even  Donald  was  quite  orthodox.  The  whole 
method  of  the  appeal  to  the  individual  assent  to  the  literal  form 
of  untransmuted  provincial  confessions  of  faith  is  false  and 
vicious.  It  does  not  commend  itself  to  the  historical  spirit  of 
the  day  as  healthy  or  normal.  It  has  had  its  day,  and  is  reap- 
ing its  natural  harvest  of  dissent  and  heterodoxy  and  wholesale 
agnosticism.  Its  creed  stringency  produced,  first,  thought- 
strangulation,  and  then  lawless  free-thinking,  divorced  from  all 
historical  continuity  with  the  Christian  heritage  of  eighteen 
centuries.  Its  rationalism  is  no  longer  rational.  Its  modern 
strait- jacket  confessions  of  faith  can  no  longer  be  laid  upon 
the  back  of  recalcitrant  Christians.     There  is  not  to-day  a 


244  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

single  modern  "Platform,"  "Confession  of  Faith,"  or  "Thirty- 
nine  Articles  of  Religion,"  that  commands  the  literal  allegiance 
formerly  demanded.  The  requiring  such  literal  assent  to 
novel  and  provincial  formularies  as  a  condition  of  church  mem- 
bership, is  a  modern  barbarism  that  seems  to  be  nearly  out- 
grown. The  modern  scholasticism  of  Protestantism  is  causing 
a  revolt  as  profound  as  that  of  the  Reformation.  The  critical, 
comparative,  and  historical  methods  are  all  against  it.  In 
place  of  this  we  have  either  the  utter  dissidence  of  dissent,  or 
the  return  to  the  concrete  social  view  of  Christianity,  in  which 
creeds  take  their  place  in  Christian  worship  and  education. 

The  church  is  far  more  and  other  than  creeds  and  articles. 
It  is  the  home  of  the  life-long  spiritual  culture  of  its  members. 
It  indoctrinates  them  only  as  the  family  does  its  members. 
The  one  who  has  passed  through  this  pedagogical  process,  and 
comes  to  reflect  upon  it,  can  never  do  so  in  the  abstract  way 
demanded  by  merely  external  criticism. 

He  reflects  on  nothing  in  isolation.  He  reflects  not  merely 
upon  the  creeds,  but  upon  the  whole  spiritual  ethos  in  which  he 
has  been  educated.  More  than  this,  he  reflects  upon  the  whole 
ethos  of  historical  Christianity,  and  only  upon  the  creeds  as  part 
of  this  concrete  process.  He  thinks  through  all  that  can  be 
said  against  creeds,  and  knows  the  historical  and  psychological 
conditions  of  their  genesis,  their  limitations,  their  worth,  and 
their  necessity.  He  thus  becomes  a  relatively  universalized  in- 
dividual; a  Christian  who  has  lived  through  and  thought 
through  all  the  growth  of  creeds  in  their  context  of  Christian 
life,  and  thus  assents  to  them  in  the  name  of  the  church  uni- 
versal.    "I,  John ,  do  hereby,  with  my  whole  nineteen- 

century-long  history  and  thought,  yield  unfeigned  assent  to 
the  result  of  this  history  and  thought,  as  embodied  in  the  his- 
torical creed  now  before  me." 

Something  like  this  is  the  formula  in  which  the  modern 
category  of  rationality  puts  creed-conformity  for  us.  It  would 
reverse  Emerson's  apothegm :  "Whoso  would  be  a  man  must  be 


ETHICS  OF  CREED  CONFORMITY  245 

a  non-conformist,"  or,  at  least,  supplant  it  by  some  of  Emer- 
son's own  more  genial  expressions,  such  as 

"All  are  needed  by  each  one; 
Nothing  is   fair  or  good  alone." 

Whoso  would  be  a  man  must  be  a  conformist.^  Unchar- 
tered freedom  not  only  tires,  but  it  also  dehumanizes.  And 
yet  the  conformity  must  be  to  something  universal,  historical, 
and  rational,  and  not  to  any  provincial  form,  either  novel  or 
antique.  Nor  can  it  be  literal  conformity  to  an  inflexible 
creed,  asking  a  man  to  bind  himself  never  to  grow.  Develop- 
ment from  oecumenical  statements  of  the  faith  is  the  least  that 
can  be  demanded.  And  the  historical  estimate  of  modern  con- 
fessions of  faith  gives  them  this  elastic  and  roomy  character, 
in  place  of  the  strait- jacket  sort  of  use  formerly  made  of  them. 

De-Calvinizing  Calvinism  by  Calvinists  is  the  patent  process 
before  our  eyes  to-day.  Bend  or  break  is  its  only  alternative. 
It  is  bending,  and  the  historical  method  justifies  and  assists  in 
the  bending  process.  In  its  naked  and  literal  form  it  is  repel- 
lent enough,  but  many  are  wise  to  still  "like  it,"  while  they  are 
reforming  it.  History  is  making  its  weight  felt  against  mere 
dicta  of  Luther,  Calvin,  and  Armenius,  as  well  as  against  the 
dicta  of  the  older  Fathers.  Their  systems  of  theology  are  fast 
becoming  chiefly  significant  as  historical  monuments,  records 
of  past  interpretations  of  the  ever-expanding  revelation  of  the 
fullness  of  Christ,  witnesses  of  the  historical  limitations  of  the 
ages  which  gave  them  birth.  This  historical  appreciation  of 
their  worth  and  their  limitations,  is  the  assent  which  we  yield 
to  them,  in  accepting  them  as  part  of  that  Christian  heritage, 
which  we  dare  not  wrap  up  in  a  napkin  or  preserve  as  a  mum- 
mified fetich.  We  thus  express  our  deep  reverence  for  the 
lively  faith  of  our  fathers,  enshrined  in  these  venerable  monu- 
ments of  religious  insight  and  theological  attainments.  We 
assent  to  them  in  their  place  in  the  history  of  Christian  doc- 
trine, as  containing  much  truth,  and  telling  us  much  about 

*  Cf.  Chap.  I. 


246  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

Christ.  The  vicarious  element,  which  must  belong  to  all  mem- 
bers of  any  body,  enters  into  all  this  preservation  of  formulas 
of  our  fathers'  and  our  brethren's  faith. 

We  dare  not,  we  cannot,  rationally  attempt  to  make  brand- 
new,  unhistorical  formulas  for  ourselves.  We  are  members 
one  of  another, — old  and  young,  first,  fourth,  sixteenth  and 
twentieth  centuries, — we  are  all  one  body  in  Christ,  and  from 
all  utterances  of  this  age-long  body  goes  up  to  heaven  one  har- 
monious anthem  of  reverence  and  love  to  our  common  Lord 
and  Master.  Many  dialects,  but  one  language;  many  forms, 
but  one  spirit ;  many  portraits,  but  one  Christ.  Mere  intellect- 
ual agreement  as  to  form  of  statement  becomes  of  less  conse- 
quence as  we  become  better  educated.  A  healthier  and  more 
humane  attitude  towards  all  temporary  and  partial  statements 
of  the  unstatable  is  the  slowly  coming  but  proper  result  of  that 
historical  spirit  that  finds  nothing  human  alien  to  itself.  Rec- 
ognition of  our  indebtedness  for  our  present  culture,  to  our 
nurture  in  opinions  which  we  have  outgrown,  tempers  our  re- 
action against  them,  and  leads  us  to  honor  our  fathers  in  the 
faith  when  we  ourselves  have  become  fathers.  We  have  a 
thoroughly  rational,  that  is,  historical  conception  of  the  true 
worth  and  authority  of  creeds.  We  are  not  fetich-worshipers, 
nor  are  we  iconoclasts.  We  know  the  history  of  all  "confes- 
sions of  faith,"  every  word  of  some  of  them  molten  in  the  fire 
of  controversy,  hastily  dispatched  from  a  battlefield,  or  forged 
as  the  heated  manifesto  of  a  victorious  faction.  We  know  the 
proper  place  of  doctrine  in  the  concrete  complex  of  Christian- 
ity, of  which  larger  life  it  is  an  imperfect  intellectual  abstract. 
We  know  the  limitless  field  these  limiting  statements  have  to 
deal  with,  and  the  limited  capacity  of  human  conception  and 
language, — to-day  as  well  as  yesterday.  We  know  the  worth 
of  symbolism,  of  poetry,  and  anthem.  We  know  that  all 
things  vital  grow,  and  that  change  and  decay  are  parts  of  vital 
development.  We  know,  too,  the  historical  and  the  ethical 
heart  of  all  creeds,  the  "Alpha  and  Omega,"  "the  desire  of 


ETHICS  OF  CREED  CONFORMITY  247 

nations,"  the  ideal  man,  the  spiritual  Christ,  the  axis  and  the 
goal  of  the  world's  history.  To  this  we  assent  under  all  tradi- 
tional form  of  sound  words  as  they  have  been  the  divine  media 
for  revealing  it  to  us. 

We  appreciate  and  care,  too,  for  the  historic  development 
of  this  central  heart  of  all  faith  in  form  of  sound  words.  We 
dare  not  discard  them  for  ourselves  and  our  children.  We 
hold  them  in  deepest  human  reverence,  though  we  must  con- 
fess that  when  we  measure  the  bones  of  the  giants  of  the 
Fathers  of  old,  we  find  them  no  larger  than  our  own,  begotten 
by  them.  We  find,  in  a  word,  that  creedal  conformity  is  our 
bounden  duty,  and  a  wholesome  service  as  members  of  the  most 
truly  human  and  most  truly  divine  form  of  institutional  life 
that  has  educated  us  into  our  present  Christian  freedom  and 
manhood.  In  all  that  we  have  said  thus  far,  we  have  referred 
chiefly  to  the  modern  Protestant  forms  of  confessions  of  faith, 
rather  than  to  the  oecumenical  creeds,  which  have  been,  as  Dr. 
Schaff  says,  "the  common  property  of  all  churches,"  or  to  the 
Nicene  Creed,  which  the  Declaration  of  the  American  House 
of  Bishops  and  the  Anglican  Lambeth  Conference  have  de- 
clared to  be  "a  sufficient  statement  of  Christian  doctrine,"  in 
the  unification  of  Christendom. 

The  historical  vindication  of  this  time-honored  universal 
creed,  shows  it  as  "the  form  of  sound  words,"  which  can  from 
many  doctrinal  distresses  free  us,  and  afford  the  basis  for 
building  all  subsequent  theological  opinions  into  a  scientific 
theology.  We  believe  that  it  can  be  demonstrated  to  be  ra- 
tional for  us  to  hold  "the  Nicene  Creed  to  be  a  sufficient  state- 
ment of  doctrine,"  and  an  ultimate  statement  of  doctrine,  so 
far  as  it  met  and  answered  the  then  opposing  world-views ;  that 
we  can  rationally  conform  to  any  environing  "confession  of 
faith"  or  "articles  of  religion,"  subject  to  this  oecumenical  and 
rational  creed,  as  the  scientific  development,  so  far  as  it  goes, 
of  the  historical  norm  of  faith  in  the  Holy  Scriptures.  All  the 
historical  conditions  of  its  formation, — an  undivided  Chris- 


248  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

tendom,  special  philosophical  culture,  meeting  the  most  pro- 
found opposing  world-views,  profound  reservation  from  mi- 
nute deductions  and  definitions, — its  rising  like  a  lofty  peak 
above  all  the  fogs  and  din  of  lower  battlefields,  its  venerable 
antiquity,  expressive  of  the  deepest  and  of  the  most  enduring 
Christian  consciousness,  all  this,  and  much  more,  make  it  to  be 
the  one  symbol,  the  one  sacred  hieroglyph,  to  which  a  philos- 
ophy of  history  demands  loyal  assent  from  every  rational 
Christian.  The  whole  of  the  ethics  of  creed  conformity  ulti- 
mately comes  to  a  vindication  of  the  historical  rationality  of 
this  monumental  symbol  of  the  Christian  faith,  as  a  "Franchise 
of  Freedom  and  a  Charter  of  Comprehension,"  though  forged 
in  the  midst  of  such  tumult,  violence,  and  trickery  as  would 
disgrace  any  modern  ecclesiastical  council.  But  the  modem 
superstitious  notion  of  the  infallibility  of  even  oecumenical 
councils  was  not  then  thought  of.  Its  worth  is  purely  in- 
trinsic. Its  heart  is  the  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation;  of  the 
perfect  manhood  and  full  Godhead  of  Jesus  Christ.  It  defines 
only  negatively  against  great  errors.  It  is  utterly  free  from 
interpretations  and  theories  as  to  the  method  of  creation,  of 
inspiration,  of  human  salvation,  of  sacramental  grace,  of  the 
future  life;  and  thus  levels  the  huge  mountains  of  theological 
theories  that  have  served  to  divide  portions  of  the  Lord's  vine- 
yard, and  to  perplex,  dishearten,  and  render  skeptical  so  many 
sons  of  God.  This,  and  very  much  more,  should  be  said  about 
the  Nicene  formula  as  the  genial  and  genuine  "Formula  Con- 
cordicB,"  the  liberator  of  the  perplexed  conscience  and  the 
doubting  intellect  of  Christendom  to-day.  We  believe  that  a 
full  and  candid  historical  study  of  the  Nicene  Symbol  will 
prove  it  to  be  the  larger  and  more  constitutional  form  of  state- 
ment needed  to-day, — an  intrinsically  valuable  and  valid  gift 
of  a  genuine  creed-making  epoch  to  all  subsequent  dogma- 
ridden  ages. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE  GROUND  OF  CERTITUDE  IN  RELIGION* 

Part  I. — Reason  and  Authority  in  Religion 

"Father,  don't  you  know  that  we  left  that  word  'must'  be- 
hind when  we  came  to  this  new  country  ?"  This  was  Patrick's 
reply  to  a  priest,  who  said  that  he  must  take  his  children  from 
the  public  school  and  must  send  them  to  the  parish  school. 
This  fairly  represents  the  uttered,  or  concealed,  reply  of  the 
mass  of  thinking  men  in  the  modern  world,  to  any  presentation 
of  the  old  authorities,  when  prescribed  without  further  ground 
than  an  uncriticised  imperative. 

We  have  left  behind  the  must  of  an  infallible  Church,  of  an 
infallible  Bible,  and  of  an  infallible  reason.  Each  one  of  these 
in  turn  has  been  abstracted  from  an  organic  process,  and  pro- 
posed as  the  authoritative  basis  of  belief.  The  inadequacy  of 
the  proof  for  such  infallibility  has  rendered  this  claim  of  each 
one  of  no  effect.  The  abstract  reason,  which  was  first  used  to 
discredit  the  other  two,  has  fallen  into  the  pit  which  itself 
digged,  and  de  profundis  rise  its  agnostic  moans.  Hence  the 
task  laid  upon  us  in  these  days  is  that  of  inquiring  whether  these 
old  musts  do  not  have  a  real  authority,  other  and  more  ethical 
than  the  one  rightfully  denied ;  to  see  whether  they  do  not  have 
a  natural  and  essential  authority  that  rational  men  must  accept 
in  order  to  be  rational. 

A  criticism  which  is  merely  negative  is  both  irrational  and 
unhuman.     The  function  of  criticism  is  to  be  the  dynamic, 

*  This  chapter  is  taken  from  a  volume  now  nearly  out  of  print,  t.  e^ 
Reason  and  Authority  in  Religion,  published  by  T.  Whittaker,  New  York. 

249 


250  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

forcing  on  from  one  static  phase  of  belief  and  institution  to 
another ;  to  destroy  only  by  conserving  in  higher  fulfilled  form. 
Its  aim  can  only  be  to  restore  as  reason  what  it  first  seeks  to 
destroy  as  the  unreason  of  mere  might ;  to  restore  as  essential 
realized  freedom  what  it  momentarily  rejects  as  external  neces- 
sity. Such  work  involves  a  thorough  reformation  of  the  whole 
edifice  of  dogma  and  institution,  a  thorough  reappreciation  of 
the  genuine  worth  of  these  works  of  the  human  spirit  under 
divine  guidance. 

Such  a  task  implies  an  ideal  of  knowledge  vastly  different 
from  that  of  ordinary  rationalism.  That  holds  an  abstract  sub- 
jective conception  of  truth,  imagined  under  the  form  of  mathe- 
matical equality  or  identity.  This  method,  on  the  contrary, 
simply  undertakes  to  understand  what  is,  or  concrete  experi- 
ence, under  the  conception  of  organic  development  in  historic 
process.  It  can  attempt  no  demonstration  of  the  organic  proc- 
ess of  religion  by  anything  external  to  it.  It  seeks  only  to  give 
an  intelligent  description  of  the  process.  The  process  itself 
gives  the  conception  of  its  rationality.  It  declines  to  abstract 
any  part  of  the  process,  or  to  seize  any  one  of  its  static  moments 
and  make  that  the  measure  or  the  proof  of  the  whole,  as  ordi- 
nary apologetics  attempt  to  do.  The  real  history  of  religion, 
then,  like  the  real  history  of  any  organism  in  nature,  is  its 
true  rationality  and  vindication. 

The  reason  appealed  to,  also,  is  that  which  manifests  itself 
in  the  corporate  process,  and  not  in  the  individual  member.  A 
religious  individual  is  an  abstraction.  The  truth  is  the  whole 
concrete  historical  institution  of  which  he  is  a  member.  Only 
as  he  experiences  or  mirrors  the  various  stages  of  this  organic 
life,  can  he  understand  or  express  the  rationality  of  religion. 
His  certitude  rests  upon  authority,  which  he,  as  autonomic,  must 
finally  impose  upon  himself.  Objective  rationality  can  only 
thus  become  subjective  and  afford  real  grounds  of  certitude. 
Such  a  method  of  acquiring  rational  certitude  may  not  satisfy 
those  whose  ideal  of  knowledge  is  that  of  ordinary  rationalism. 


REASON  AND  AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION  251 

But  have  we  not  vainly  tried  to  satisfy  such  an  ideal  long 
enough?  Has  not  the  century  and  a  half  of  "the  age  of  rea- 
son" landed  us  in  agnosticism,  from  which  it  cannot  extricate 
us  ?  Are  we  not  ready  to  abandon  the  attempt  of  such  rational- 
ism and  try  the  higher  method?  This  method  consists  in  an 
historical  and  a  philosophical  study  of  religion. 

The  historical  inquiry  should  first  enable  us  to  see  the  value 
of  Bible  and  Church  as  records  and  aids  of  the  religious  life 
of  the  past.  The  philosophic  inquiry  should  then  enable  us  to 
see  their  necessity  and  worth  to  the  religious  life  of  our  times. 
Neither  of  these  methods  is  so  irrational  as  to  dare  to  sectarian- 
ize  our  religious  life  from  that  of  the  past.  Both  see  this  life 
as  a  continuous  process,  and  only  seek  to  understand  and  inter- 
pret what  has  been,  as  an  aid  to  what  should  be.  Neither  of 
them  are  individualistic. 

The  whole  swing  of  the  pendulum  of  thought  to-day  is 
away  from  the  individual,  and  towards  the  social,  point  of  view. 
Theories  of  society  are  supplanting  theories  of  the  individual. 
The  solidarity  of  man  is  the  regnant  thought  in  both  the  scien- 
tific and  the  historical  study  of  man.  It  is  even  running  into 
the  extreme  of  a  determinism  that  annihilates  the  individual. 
Both  theology  and  ecclesiasticism  have  passed  through  this  ex- 
treme, which  we  may  call  the  Chinese  phase  of  belief  and  life. 
The  Protestant  world  is  slow  to  yield  to  the  Zeitgeist  heralding 
a  retreat  from  individualism  to  socialism,  dreading  a  repetition 
of  its  tyranny.  But  the  swing  of  the  pendulum  has  also  be- 
gun in  these  spheres.  "Martyrs  of  disgust"  may  be  the  loudest 
and  foremost  fuglemen  in  the  retreat.  But  this  does  not  pre- 
vent the  heralds  of  concrete  reason  from  advancing  backward 
to  reclaim  their  neglected  heritage.  The  institution  and  the 
creed  of  the  whole  are  being  seen  to  have  a  rational  authority 
that  must  be  recognized.  Society  is  seen  to  be  the  obligatory 
theatre  for  the  realization  of  freedom.  Its  authority  is  seen  to 
be  that  of  order  and  harmony  of  individual  minds  and  wills. 
No  Church  no  Christian,  no  oecumenical  creed  no  right  belief. 


252  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

But  Church  and  Creed  are  already  old.  We  cannot  manu- 
facture totally  new  ones.  Nor  can  we  accept  the  old  forms  at 
their  old  worth,  as  fetters  of  thought  and  action.  We  have 
outgrown  that  form  of  their  authority,  as  the  child  outgrows 
the  paternal  authority.  So  we  think.  But  the  analogy  is  not 
perfect.  Besides,  the  authority  of  the  father  as  that  of  a 
full-grown  man,  which  develops  the  powers  of  the  child,  is 
never  fully  shaken  off.  Nor  does  the  individual  member  of  a 
community  ever  outgrow  the  larger  wisdom  of  the  whole. 

The  danger  of  a  weak  romanticizing;  of  pathetically  pes- 
simistic distrust  of  reason  causing  an  uncritical  acceptance  of 
all  the  old  bonds,  should  not  deter  us  from  seeking  a  rationale 
of  them  that  will  compel  an  ethical  submission  to  their  rightful 
authority.  But  it  should  put  us  on  our  guard  against  humor- 
ing a  weak  phase  of  the  human  spirit,  which  comes  when  its 
wings  droop  from  weariness,  so  that  a  plunge  into  the  ocean 
beneath  seems  relief.  It  should  also  put  us  on  our  guard  lest 
the  oncoming  of  this  social  view  be  permitted  to  take  an  ab- 
stract form,  and  thus  crush  out  the  might  and  right  of  person- 
ality. We  should  be  alert  to  carry  with  us  all  the  hard-won 
fruits  of  Protestantism.  The  danger  is  that  we  may  find  our- 
selves slaves  again. 

The  two  phases  of  authority  for  which  Apologetics  ordina- 
rily contends  are  the  intellectual  and  the  practical.  The  first 
is  that  of  creed  or  orthodoxy,  the  other  is  that  of  institution  or 
Church.  Till  recently  the  burden  of  Apologetics  has  been 
the  maintenance  of  orthodoxy,  which  has  largely  meant  Calvin- 
ism, founded  upon  an  unhistorical  interpretation  of  an  assumed 
infallible  Bible.  Such  Apologetics  has  had  its  day.  It  has  al- 
most destroyed  both  orthodoxy  and  the  Bible. 

The  other  phase  of  Apologetics  now  claims  to  be  heard.  It 
claims  to  include  the  task  of  the  former  phase.  The  Church, 
as  the  author  of  the  creed  and  the  Bible,  proposes  to  vindicate 
them  as  parts  of  its  process — as  its  own  offspring — in  vindicat- 
ing itself  as  the  practical  embodiment  and  promoter  of  Chris- 


REASON  AND  AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION  253 

tianity.  We  need  scarcely  disclaim  any  sympathy  with  this 
phase  as  represented  by  Romanist  and  High-Anglican.  The 
common  method  of  both  is  arbitrary,  abstract,  unhistorical,  dog- 
matic and  unconvincing.  It  is  the  "must"  which  Patrick  left 
behind  in  the  old  country.  But  Patrick  never  leaves  his  patri- 
otism behind.  He  has  a  double  sort  of  patriotism  for  both  his 
old  and  his  new  country.  He  is  unreflectingly  wiser  and  more 
concrete  than  the  abstract  rationalist  who  owns  "no  tribe,  nor 
state,  nor  home,"  nor  content,  except  what  he  makes  for  him- 
self. Nor  can  we  leave  the  Church  behind.  It  has  helped 
make  us  what  we  are.  The  rational  form  of  this  method, 
then,  commands  sympathy.  It  should  include  a  historical  and 
psychological  study  of  the  institution,  in  order  to  arrive  at 
a  philosophical  vindication  of  its  rational  authority  over  indi- 
viduals, as  constitutive  of  their  essential  ,  well-being.  This 
affords  a  relative  vindication  of  the  various  phases,  and  an  ab- 
solute vindication  of  the  whole  process  and  its  results.  The 
end  justifies  the  means ;  is  immanent  in  and  constitutive  of  these. 
But  this  process  and  result  are  in  and  through  the  community. 
The  Church  is  Christianity.  Its  ground  of  certitude  and  au- 
thority is  in  the  whole.  It  is  in  the  light  of  thrs  general  concep- 
tion of  an  organic  social  process,  that  we  must  seek  for  the 
ground  of  certitude  in  both  subjective  and  objective  religion. 

Certitude  is  conviction  resting  on  discernment,  as  a  con- 
stant element  in  all  the  activity  of  our  mental  and  spiritual  fac- 
ulties. The  certitude  resting  on  authority  or  on  testimony, 
really  rests  on  a  discernment  of  their  reasonableness.  Thus 
certitude  is  personal.  It  is  the  yea  and  amen  of  private  judg- 
ment. It  comes  from  the  manifestation  of  the  truth  by  God 
through  media.  In  the  case  of  religious  certitude,  the  inclusive 
medium  is  the  Church.  But  no  doctrine  of  the  Church  as  an 
organism  that  denies  the  right  and  duty  of  private  judgment 
can  remain  an  ethical  one.  Protestantism  has  bought  this  at 
too  great  a  price  to  be  bartered  away.  It  is  only  as  against  an 
abstract  individualism  that  ignores  the  patent  fact,  that  one 


254  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

is  what  he  is  by  virtue  of  the  social  tissue  in  which  he  Hves,  that 
there  is  need  of  reasserting  the  authority  of  this  constitutive 
environment.  But  this  must  be  an  ethical  organism,  inclusive 
of,  and  living  only  in  and  through  its  individual  members.  It 
is  just  as  true  that  the  Church  exists  in  and  through  its  indi- 
vidual members,  as  it  is  that  they  exist  in  and  through  the 
Church.  It  is  a  kingdom  of  persons  where  all  are  kings,  be- 
cause all  are  persons,  and  not  an  abstract  external  authority. 
It  is  an  organism  of  organisms,  a  person  of  persons,  a  Holy 
Spirit  that  only  lives  and  realizes  itself  on  earth  through  per- 
sonal members.  This  much  is  said  here,  to  guard  against  any 
suspicion  of  reverting  to  the  abstract  conception  of  the  au- 
thority of  the  Church  as  a  ground  of  certitude,  which  was  "the 
infinite  falsehood"  of  mediaeval  ecclesiasticism. 

I  have  used  the  singular,  ground,  instead  of  the  plural, 
grounds,  because  what  we  wish  is  a  vital  organic  universal,  in- 
stead of  a  number  of  abstract  particulars.  "To  be  confined 
within  the  range  of  mere  grounds,  is  the  position  and  principle 
characterizing  the  sophists."  This  species  of  accidental,  arbi- 
trary, special-pleading  reasoning;  this  giving  a  pro  for  every 
con;  this  age  of  reason  (of  grounds)  in  Apologetics,  had  full 
sweep  in  the  eighteenth  century  and  far  enough  into  the  nine- 
teenth to  be  responsible  for  much  of  the  prevalent  scepticism. 

To-day,  the  ordinary  grounds  or  proofs  of  our  religion  are 
justly  called  in  question,  and  we  are  asking  for  a  fundamental 
universal  ground  (an  Urgrund)  of  them  all — ^prophecy,  mira- 
cle, the  incarnation,  the  Bible,  the  Church,  and  reason — for 
the  authority  of  all  these  authorities. 

This  Urgrund  must  be  an  organic  first  principle  which 
unfolds  into  a  philosophy  of  religion  as  the  only  final  and  satis- 
factory Apologetic  for  Christianity ;  a  first  principle  which  vin- 
dicates religion  as  a  genuine  and  necessary  factor  in  the  life  of 
man,  and  Christianity  as  the  fruition  of  all  religion.  Resting 
either  in  the  simple  faith  of  childhood ;  or  on  abstract  external 
evidences ;  or  yielding  blindly  to  external  authority  by  arbitrary 


REASON  AND  AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION  255 

wilful  repression  of  thought,  as  did  the  late  Cardinal  New- 
man :  none  of  these  methods  are  possible  to-day.  Mere  dogma 
and  mere  external  evidences  and  authority  are  no  antidote  to 
doubt,  no  grounds  of  certitude  in  our  day. 

It  is  needless  to  multiply  words  in  describing  the  patent 
phase  of  current  religious  thought.  It  is,  in  brief,  one  of 
unrest  and  doubt,  and  yet  also  one  of  faith  and  reconstruction. 
It  is  attempting  the  necessary  feat  of  swallowing  and  digesting 
its  own  offspring  of  doubts.  It  is  on  its  way  to  an  Urgrund 
which  cannot  be  something  outside  of  itself.  This  can  be 
nothing  but  the  generic  principle  which,  as  constitutive  and 
organic,  is  implicit  throughout  its  whole  process.  At  best 
there  can  be  but  an  approximate  comprehension  of  this  imma- 
nent life-principle.  But  it  is  the  task  which  the  thoughtful 
human  spirit  feels  as  a  categorical  imperative.  There  is  an 
underlying  faith  or  certitude,  even  in  those  phases  where  nega- 
tive results  are  most  conspicuous.  There  is  an  everlasting  yea 
beneath  doubt,  which  alone  renders  doubt  possible. 

Religion  is  acknowledged  to  be  one  of  the  great  human 
universals,  co-extensive  with  man's  history,  and  as  varied  in 
form  as  his  culture.  It  is  truly  and  essentially  human.  It  is  a 
necessary  part  of  humanity's  life.  No  religion,  imperfect  man. 
Organizations  may  decay  and  theologies  crumble,  but  the  re- 
ligious spirit  lives  on  through  and  above  these  changes,  mak- 
ing for  itself  ever  more  congenial  and  adequate  manifestations 
and  organs  of  its  perennial  life — rising  on  stepping  stones  of  its 
petrified  forms  to  higher  ones.  With  art  and  philosophy  it 
forms  the  triad  of  man's  relations  with  the  Absolute  Spirit.  In 
these  three  inter-related  and  mutually  sustaining  spheres  is  ex- 
hibited the  perfection  of  his  spiritual  character  and  functions. 
The  creative  object,  the  ultimate  and  constitutive  ground  of 
them  all,  is  God. 

What  is  religion?  A  descriptive  definition  of  the  totality 
of  phenomena  which  constitutes  religion  would  be  too  extensive. 
So  too  would  be  a  mere  enumeration  of  the  definitions  of  it  that 


3S6  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

have  been  proposed.  But  most  of  such  definitions  have  a  com- 
mon heart,  and  proceed  from  a  varied  reflection  of  a  common 
truth.  ReHgion  is  at  least  a  conscious  reverential  relation  of 
man  to  God.  It  may  be  "morality  tinged  with  emotion,"  but 
that  emotion  must  come  from  impact  of  the  soul  with  God.  It 
is  a  spiritual  activity  of  self-relation  to  the  great  "Power  not 
ourselves,"  through  feeling,  thought  and  will.  It  is  a  striving 
to  fall  upward  from  the  mere  physical  side  of  our  life.  But  this 
implies — and  implies  as  its  essential  presupposition — the  falling 
down,  the  self-relation  of  this  Power  to  man.  We  must  there- 
fore define  religion  as  the  reciprocal  relation  or  communion  of 
God  and  man. 

These  two  sides  of  this  organic  process  may  be  termed  ( i ) 
Revelation,  (2)  Faith.  That  is,  the  self-relation  of  God  to  man 
constitutes  the  conception  of  revelation ;  the  self-relation  of  man 
to  God  constitutes  that  of  faith.  The  two  elements  are  correla- 
tive, though  that  of  God's  activity  is  both  chronologically  and 
logically  primal,  and  evocative  of  the  other.  Thus  religion  rests 
upon  a  universal.  It  is  not  merely  subjective.  We  cannot  ab- 
stract faith  from  revelation.  For  it  is  only  both  together  that 
give  us  the  concrete  content  of  religion. 

(i).  Revelation  is  the  moment  of  divine  self-showing  in 
the  organic  process  which  constitutes  religion.  As  the  self-re- 
lation of  God  to  man,  it  is  a  primal  and  perennial  act,  which, 
in  religion,  is  recognized  as  a  phase  of  one's  own  personal  ex- 
perience. As  immediate,  it  forms  the  background  of  all  human 
life — sentient,  mental  and  moral.  It  forms  the  ^M/>ra-nature 
of  humanity,  and  is  creative  of  it.  Back  of,  beneath,  immanent 
in  (furd)  all  that  is  human,  there  is  that  which  constitutes  and 
sustains  it.  This  metaphysics  of  man,  mental  and  moral,  is  the 
immanent,  immediate  relation  of  God  to  humanity.  But  the 
term  is  generally  confined  to  what  we  may  call  mediated  revela- 
tion. God's  self-relation  to  us  is  continually  mediated  and 
brought  to  our  consciousness  through  our  physical,  mental, 
moral  and  social  relations.     He  is  immanent  in  these  relations, 


REASON  AND  AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION  257 

and  thus  reveals  himself  to  our  conscious  experience.  It  is 
through  our  knowledge  of  nature,  through  our  knowledge  and 
love  of  our  brethren — that  is,  through  our  knowledge  of  the 
physical  and  moral  world-order — that  we  become  conscious  of 
God's  relation  to  us.  Signs  and  tokens  and  mighty  works, 
Bible  and  Church,  family  and  social  life,  have  all  been  used  as 
media  of  this  revelation.  Revelation,  however  mediated,  consti- 
tutes the  objective  side  of  religion. 

(2).  Faith  is  the  subjective  side.  It  is  man's  conscious 
apprehension  of  God  thus  related  to  him  through  revelation. 
It  embraces  all  the  constituent  elements  of  the  human  side  of  re- 
ligion— the  apprehension  of  the  Godward  side  of  all  that  we  do 
or  say  or  think.  Faith  is  faith.  This  tautological  definition  is 
compulsory,  from  the  nature  of  the  activity.  It  is  a  primal, 
basal  activity  of  the  human  spirit.  It  is  the  simplest,  and  yet 
may  be  the  most  complex,  activity  of  conscious  man.  It  has  no 
special  organ  and  is  no  special  faculty,  but  is  the  dynamic  in  all 
our  faculties.  It  contains  elements  of  feeling,  thinking  and  will- 
ing, because  it  is  the  actus  purus  prevenient  and  cooperating 
with  all  these  faculties.  It  is  the  spirit's  apprehension  of  re- 
alities through  these  faculties.  It  is  its  practical  self-conscious- 
ness of  the  Absolute.  It  is  the  self  practically  conscious  of  it- 
self, in  its  relation  with  God.  Thus  it  is  only  another  name  for 
the  highest  phase  of  self-consciousness. 

Such  self-consciousness  is  never  merely  subjective.  Its 
contents  are  the  results  of  the  mediation  of  all  its  physical,  social 
and  religious  environment  and  training,  and  ultimately  of  God, 
through  these  media.  Religious  faith — and  specifically  Chris- 
tian faith — is  God's  children's  cry  of  Abba,  Father.  It  is  their 
apprehension  of  their  divine  sonship,  the  responsive  thrill  of 
emotion  awakened  by  the  consciousness  of  God's  paternal  rela- 
tion to  them.  Abraham's  faith  was  his  consciousness  of  friend- 
ship with  God.  Our  faith  is  our  consciousness  of  divine  son- 
ship  through  his  eternal  Son,  Jesus  Christ.  Such  Christian 
faith  is  a  very  profound  and  simple,  and  yet  a  mos£  complex 

17 


as8  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

stage  of  self -consciousness.  It  involves  the  mediation  of  a 
Christian  education,  which  implies  that  of  nineteen  centuries  of 
the  Church's  life.  Thus,  while  our  faith  is  subjective  and  per- 
sonal, it  is  only  so  because  we  have  been  educated  into  the  con- 
scious possession  of  the  Christian  heritage  of  centuries.  Our 
personal  subjective  faith  itself,  as  well  as  objective  faith,  is 
grounded  upon  and  mediated  for  us  through  institutional  Chris- 
tianity. 

Thus  the  objective  ground  of  religion  is  God,  and  the  sub- 
jective ground  faith — or  the  simple  apprehension,  through  more 
or  less  media,  of  this  relation — ^thus  converting  the  whole  into 
the  process  of  reciprocal  relations  between  God  and  man,  which 
constitute  religion. 

It  will  not  do  to  substitute  for  God  "the  Power  not  our- 
selves," Law,  Force,  Substance,  or  any  sub-personal  category. 
And  the  non-personal  is  always  sub-personal.  It  may  be  aC' 
knowledged  that  some  scientific  conceptions  of  law,  order,  na- 
ture, cosmos,  are  higher  in  one  sense  than  some  anthropomorphic 
conceptions  of  God,  but  they  are  never  supra-personal,  and  can 
never  afford  the  conscious  relation  we  call  religion.  Our  analy- 
sis of  the  content  of  consciousness  can  only  arbitrarily  stop  short 
of  that  of  self-consciousness,  or  self-determined  totality. 

If  the  charge  is  made  that  our  conception  of  the  first  principle 
as  personal  is  merely  subjective — the  imaginative  reflection  of 
our  own  mind  upon  phenomena — it  may  at  least  be  met  by  the 
counter-charge  of  the  same  subjectivism  in  scientific  concep- 
tions. Matter,  law,  force,  are  equally  subjective  measurements 
of  the  objective  by  the  subjective.  But  this  argumentum  ad 
hominem  is  only  a  side  thrust  of  thought  on  its  way  through 
and  above  all  such  imperfect  conceptions  of  the  first  principle. 
All  such  conceptions  are  implicitly  religious.  They  imply  as 
their  ground  the  full  conception  of  God.  Hence  the  scientist 
is  sane  only  as  he  becomes  devout.  But  this  criticism  of  the 
categories  of  ordinary  science,  making  explicit  its  real  ground, 


REASON  AND  AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION  259 

is  the  work  of  philosophy  proper.  It  is  the  needed  corrective 
of  scientific  agnosticism. 

Such  a  criticism  of  the  categories  of  thought  reaches  a  sys- 
tem of  categories,  with  God  as  the  impHcit  and  the  ultimate  one. 
Religion  grasps  this  without  reflection.  Philosophy  has  nothing 
further  to  do  than  to  point  out  the  necessity  and  rationality  of 
the  human  spirit  reaching  and  resting  in  communion  with  this 
personal  First  Principle  or  Urgrund.  The  Incarnation,  as  the 
perfect  realization  of  this  bond  between  God  and  man,  and  the 
extension  of  the  Incarnation  in  history,  are  the  essential  media 
of  both  present  religious  and  philosophical  apprehension  of  this 
generic  Urgrund.  In  neither  case  is  it  reached  directly  or  in- 
tuitively. 

Religion,  then,  as  a  part  of  man's  consciousness,  has  its  ulti- 
mate ground  in  the  eternal  and  loving  reason  of  the  First  Prin- 
ciple of  all  things.  Faith  itself,  or  the  subjective  side,  is  neces- 
sarily reduced  to  the  action  of  the  Divine  Spirit  in  man.  The 
consciousness  of  this  actual  vital  relation,  or  reciprocal  bond  be- 
tween God  and  man,  is  a  primal  and  perennial  fact,  and  the  ulti- 
mate ground  of  religious  certitude.  Consciousness  in  man  is 
implicitly  a  knowing  of  self  with  God  (con-scius) ,  and  hence  of 
knowing  God  in  knowing  self.  This  is  the  real  significance  of 
the  ontological  proof  of  the  existence  of  God. 

This  bond  is  as  real  a  relation  as  the  causal  relation.  In- 
deed, it  is  often  identified  with  this  relation.  Our  heredity  is 
from  God,  even  though  it  be  through  lower  forms  of  life,  and 
our  goal  is  also  God,  even  though  it  be  through  imperfect  man- 
hood. The  ground  of  religion  we  find,  then,  to  be  nothing  ex- 
trinsic. It  does  not  need  a  special  handle  in  the  way  of  external 
reasons.  It  is  not  founded  upon  nor  sustained  by  the  various 
alleged  proofs.  These  may  vary  and  pass  away,  but  the  activity 
continues  as  a  necessary  function  of  normal  humanity.  Re- 
ligion will  be  found  at  the  grave  as  well  as  at  the  cradle  of  man, 
because  God  is  the  immanent  and  transcendent  essence  of  man.^ 

^  "As  the  personality  of  man  has  its  foundation  in  the  personality  of 


26o  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

God  is  the  ultimate  metaphysics  of  man,  physical,  mental 
and  spiritual ;  the  real  substance ;  the  continuously  creative  and 
sustaining  power  in  His  offspring.  The  Benedicite  is  the  spon- 
taneous expression  of  the  whole  groaning  and  rejoicing  crea- 
tion. If  men  should  be  so  insensate  as  not  to  worship,  "the 
stones  would  immediately  cry  out"  an  anthem  of  praise.  The 
Psalmist's  exclamation,  "Thou  hast  beset  me  behind  and  before ; 
....  Thou  hast  covered  me  in  my  mother's  womb,"  voices  the 
consciousness  of  this  ultimate  metaphysics  of  all  things  physical. 
This  Urgrund  is  creatively  present  before  consciousness  comes 
to  raise  the  new-born  man  above  the  brutes.  It  begets  religion 
as  soon  as  consciousness  of  this  power,  in  however  low  a  form, 
appears,  binding  man  back  to  (re-ligare)  or  causing  him  to 
review  (re-legere)  the  fact  of  this  primal  relation.  This  con- 
sciousness varies  in  degree,  strength,  form  and  clearness  of  con- 
tent. But  it  is  the  ground  of  the  various  grounds  that  we  can 
offer  as  causal  of  this,  which  is  itself  the  cause  of  them.  Proph- 
ecy and  miracle,  the  Bible,  Church  and  reason  also,  are  all  its 
offspring,  and  authenticated  by  it,  rather  than  the  reverse. 

But  it  is  impossible  that  this  fundamental  fact  of  conscious- 
ness could  be  perfect  at  once.  Religion,  individual  and  racial, 
has  a  history.  It  begins  as  an  immediate,  indefinite  apprehen- 
sion of  the  relation  in  the  subjective  consciousness,  but  it  ex- 
pands and  wins  definite  content  with  the  growth  of  human  con- 
sciousness in  all  spheres  of  experience.  Thus  subjective  re- 
ligion expands  with  new  revelation  and  apprehension  of  it  into 
objective  forms  of  creed,  cult  and  institution,  which  in  turn 
educe  and  strengthen  it.  The  same  spontaneous  consciousness 
of  "the  Power  not  ourselves"  that  led  the  childhood  of  the  race 
to  personify  earth  and  sky,  also  led  Plato  and  Qement  and 
Hegel,  through  the  mediation  of  Greek  and  Christian  culture, 
to  proclaim  the  essential  and  perennial  kinship  of  man  with  God, 
in  all  the  concrete  experience  of  his  life  and  institutions. 

God,  so  the  realization  of  personality  brings  man  always  nearer  to 
God." — Mulford's  Republic  of  God,  p.  28. 


REASON  AND  AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION  261 

There  is  more  than  an  analogy,  there  is  a  real  kinship  be- 
tween the  psychological  and  objective  development  in  the  in- 
dividual and  the  race.  So  we  may  trace  a  common  outline  for 
both.  Indeed  its  development  in  the  individual  is  only  ren- 
dered possible  through  connection  with  a  communal  life.  It  is 
only  by  a  false  abstraction  that  the  religion  of  the  individual  can 
be  considered  separately.  Here  as  elsewhere  the  universal  is 
prior  to,  and  constitutive  of,  the  individual.  But  this  is  not  an 
abstract  universal.  It  is  the  concrete  organism  of  which  he  is 
a  vital  member. 

One  can  say  I  believe  (credo)  only  by  first  having  joined 
with  others  in  saying  "we  believe"  (ttio-tcuo/licv).  The  /  always 
implies  the  we.  It  equals  to-day  the  socialized  and  Chris- 
tianized man  of  the  twentieth  century.  I  believe,  because  they 
— nineteen  centuries  of  Christian  kinsmen — have  believed ;  and 
because  we,  the  Universal  Church,  believe.  Still,  the  subjec- 
tive factor  is  central,  and  our  socialized  faith  is  personal  com- 
munion with  God.  The  individual  has  absorbed,  and  has  been 
realized,  not  annihilated  by,  the  universal.  Religion  remains 
to  the  end  a  personal  relation  to  a  Person,  however  much  it  has 
been  nourished  and  quickened  by  the  community.  "I  believe" 
now  means  the  subjective  personal  self-affirmation,  "the  ever- 
lasting yea"  of  our  Christianized  consciousness. 

But  what  do  I  believe  ?  What  is  the  definite  content  of  the 
religious  relation  of  the  individual  with  God  ? 

I  believe  the  consense  of  the  Christian  consciousness  in  re- 
gard to  God,  man  and  the  world.  I  believe  "The  Catholic 
Faith."  We  are  far  beyond  the  faith  of  childhood,  of  primitive 
man.  The  historic  process  of  revelation  and  faith  has  rendered 
primitive  immediate  faith  impossible  and  irrational.  Both  the 
act  and  the  content  have  been  endlessly  mediated  for  us.  Our 
consciousness  of  God  has  been  enriched  by  that  of  a  host  of 
heroes  of  the  faith,  and  by  the  cult  and  dogma  of  centuries  of 
Christendom.  Questions  have  been  asked  and  answered  for  us 
before  we  were  born.    We  have  been  born  into  the  heritage  of 


262  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

these  answered  questions  in  the  shape  of  the  oecumenical  creeds, 
though  enough  open  questions  still  remain  to  make  us  heroes 
of  faith,  and  our  gen'eration  an  age  of  faith. 

But  /  believe.  This  heritage  of  the  Christian  faith  is  mine, 
only  by  the  subjective  personal  activity  of  appropriation  and 
realization.  The  Creeds  are  the  records  of  a  series  of  deep  in- 
sights into  the  content  of  the  Christian  consciousness.  The 
mastery  of  these  is  an  ascent  of  the  individual  into  the  universal ; 
something  that  cannot  be  ours  by  mere  rote-learning,  but  only 
as  we  think  over,  verify,  re-create  or  experience  anew  within 
ourselves.  Subjective  faith  remains  the  most  important  element 
of  our  spiritual  life.  We  cannot  be  merely  passive  recipients 
of  the  most  opulent  heritage.  And  yet  the  universal,  the  objec- 
tive, rightly  claims  its  place.  We  see  this,  also,  when  we  ask 
further : 

Why  do  I  believe  the  Catholic  faith  ?  What  renders  it  pos- 
sible for  me  to  make  this  my  own  personal  faith?  Why  does 
my  faith,  my  consciousness  of  relation  with  God,  have  this  defi- 
nite form  and  content?  This  form  of  faith,  though  personal, 
is  not  an  immediate  consciousness — a  primitive  unmediated  rev- 
elation of  God.  It  is  not  a  matter  of  mere  individual  feeling 
or  intuition.  The  why  can  only  be  answered  by  reading  the 
whole  history  of  his  development,  through  the  interaction  of 
subjectivism  and  objectivism,  of  the  self  and  its  environment. 
A  fair  analysis  of  this  process*  likewise  leads  back  to  God  as  its 
ultimate  ground.  The  psychological  and  historical  lead  back 
to  this  metaphysical  Urgrund.  This  stage  of  what  we  call 
Christian  nurture  is  an  indispensable  phase  in  the  development 
of  both  strength  and  definiteness  of  faith.  It  is  here  that  the 
rationality  of  authoritative  catechetical  Church  teaching  and 
Christian  influence  of  family  and  community  are  to  be  justified. 

It  is  chiefly  in  this  what  and  why  of  religion  that  we  meet 
with  grounds  that  seem  to  be  extrinsic  and  accidental.  The 
task,  then,  is  to  translate  these  grounds  into  rationality ;  to  dis- 
cover their  place,  that  renders  them  necessary  and  rational  ele- 


REASON  AND  AUTHORITY  IN  RELIGION  263 

ments  of  the  organic  process  of  the  relation  of  God  and  man. 
This  task  includes  the  psychological  study  of  the  development 
of  man  in  the  social  organism,  and  the  historical  study  of  the 
development  of  the  social  organism  itself,  and  the  reflective 
thought  on  the  way  back  to  the  ultimate  or  metaphysical  ground. 

The  faith,  though  once  delivered,  could  never,  from  the  con- 
dition of  the  case,  even  in  Christianity,  be  "once  for  all  deliv-» 
ered"  to  the  individual  or  the  community.  This  has  had,  is' 
having,  and  will  have  a  psychological  history  in  both.  Faith 
as  an  activity  is  forever  the  same,  but  its  content,  and  the  inter- 
pretation of  this  content,  vary  and  develop  with  new  conditions 
and  culture.  The  life-giving  Spirit  inspires  to  some  new  form 
of  practical  religion,  to  meet  new  issues.  The  type  of  Christi- 
anity changes.  Then  the  intellectual  seers  note  this  life,  and 
modify  the  old  theology  so  as  to  include  it. 

The  question  then  is,  whether  the  environment  leading  to 
change  of  both  vital  and  creedal  form  of  Christianity  can  be 
justified;  whether,  in  theological  language,  we  can  see  the 
hand  of  Providence ;  or,  in  the  language  of  philosophy,  whether 
we  can  discern  the  immanent  logic  or  reason  thus  objectifying 
itself  in  rational  forms  ?  Or,  if  we  restrict  creedal  form  to  the 
CEcumenical  symbols,  and  the  normal  ecclesiastical  form  to  that 
of  the  primitive  Church,  the  question  is  whether  we  can  discern 
the  rationality  in  the  culture  of  Greece  and  Rome  as  well  as  in 
that  of  Judea,  which  makes  "them  legitimate  ingredients  in  a 
catholic,  complete  Christianity."  Can  we,  in  other  words,  reach 
a  philosophy  of  religion  that  justifies  the  multiform  develop- 
ment of  the  two  inseparable  elements  of  religion — revelation 
and  faith;  God's  seeking  and  man's  finding;  God's  adhesion  to 
man  and  man  s  adhesion  to  God  ?  Such  a  philosophy  of  re- 
ligion must  be  based  upon  a  philosophy  of  history  which  must 
be  simply  a  rational  comprehension  of  empirical  history.  We 
thus  indicate  a  work  far  beyond  the  limits  of  this  present  essay. 
We  can  do  no  more  than  note  briefly  the  psychological  forms 
through  which  religion  passes  in  racial  and  individual  experi- 


a64  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

ence,  catching  glimpses  of  the  immanent  rationality  in  the  whole 
process. 

Part  II. — The  Psychological  Forms  of  Religion 

We  designate  these  three  forms  as  (i)  that  of  Feeling,  (2) 
that  of  Knowing  in  its  three  phases  of  (a)  conception,  (b)  re- 
flection and  (c)  comprehension,  and  (3)  that  of  Willing. 

These  are  inseparable  parts  of  consciousness,  that  we  can 
only  artificially  separate  for  purpose  of  study.  The  universal 
element  of  thinking  is  more  or  less  present  in  the  particular  ele- 
ment of  feeling;  and  willing  fuses  them  both  into  the  concrete 
individuality  of  person  or  epoch.  But  in  different  ages  and  per- 
sons, and  in  the  same  person  at  different  times,  one  or  the  other 
of  these  phases  is  more  emphasized  than  the  others.  Hence 
religion  varies  in  its  psychological  form. 

( I ) .  Religion  as  Feeling. — Religion  exists  primarily  in  the 
form  of  feeling.  Its  genesis  belongs  to  the  primitive  depths  in 
which  the  soul  is  just  distinguishing  itself  from  the  great  not- 
self  about  it.  It  is  the  first  coming  into  consciousness  of  the 
pre-conscious  fact  that  everyone  is  born  of  God.  And  this  feel- 
ing is  generally  mediated  by  some  religious  instruction.  The 
power  behind  and  before  is  first  felt,  rather  than  known.  This 
gives  the  sense  of  dependence,  which  always  remains  an  integral 
part  of  religion.  It  may  run  through  the  gamut  of  reverence, 
fear,  dismay  and  terror,  or  devil-worship.  Or  this  power  may 
be  felt  as  a  congenial  and  beneficent  one,  and  the  feeling  run 
through  the  gamut  of  reverence,  confidence,  love,  peace  and 
ecstasy,  or  mysticism.  Fear  and  confidence  are  the  two  marked 
elements  in  this  phase  of  religion.  There  is  no  lack  of  certitude 
in  it.  The  unreasoned  certitude  of  feeling  hallows  any  object, 
from  a  log  of  wood  to  the  sky,  from  a  Jupiter  to  a  Jehovah. 
The  fetich-worshiper  has  as  much  certitude  as  a  Mariolater. 
All  religions  alike  afford  this  certitude  to  their  worshipers. 

Historical  illustrations  of  religions  and  of  individuals  in 


PSYCHOLOGICAL  FORMS  OF  RELIGION  265 

this  phase  will  occur  to  every  one.  So  also  will  the  names  of 
Jacobi  and  Schleiermacher,  who,  in  their  reaction  from  vulgar 
rationalism,  tried  to  make  religion  entirely  a  matter  of  feeling 
or  of  the  heart.  The  certitude  of  this  stage,  I  have  said,  is  no 
measure  of  the  worth  of  the  contents  of  feeling.  De  aifectihus 
non  est  disputandum.  Schleiermacher  went  so  far,  we  know,  as 
■  to  say  that  every  religion  or  religious  feeling  was  good  and  true ; 
thus  proposing  a  philosophy  "as  much  contrary  to  revealed  re- 
ligion as  to  rational  knowledge,"  and  making  anything  like  a 
communion  of  worshipers  impossible.  Each  one  has  his  own 
feeling,  and  this  may  be  so  emphasized  as  to  lead  to  both  sec- 
tarianism and  atheism. 

But,  strictly  speaking,  this  elementary  phase  of  religion  is 
quite  indefinite  as  to  what  it  feels.  Until  other  elements  enter 
in,  there  is  no  personal  object  given  to  worship.  It  represents 
the  first  conscious  mysterious  impulse  toward  the  infinite  and 
eternal.  It  represents  those  elements  of  reverence  and  confi- 
dence which  made  our  Saviour  promise  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven 
to  children.  But  it  is  a  phase  into  which  other  elements  do 
speedily  enter.  The  activity  of  the  human  spirit  in  relation  with 
the  Infinite  Spirit  impels  it  on  to  definite  conceptions  of  God  and 
content  of  feeling.  Milk  for  babes,  stronger  nourishment  for 
the  growing  child. 

(2).  Religion  as  Knowing. — The  phase  of  knowing  in  re- 
ligion,^ 

We  distinguish  here  three  phases  of  knowing:  (a)  Con- 
ception, (b)  Reflection,  and  (c)  Comprehension. 

(a).  That  of  Conception. — Mere  feeling  is  rather  an  hypo- 
thetical stage  of  activity.  Objects  that  produce  feeling  are  soon 
named,  or  learned,  or  imagined.  The  child  is  soon  initiated 
into  definite  religious  conceptions  which  nourish  his  religious 
activity.     This  introduction  into  objective  forms  of  belief  and 

*  I  may  refer  to  my  Studies  in  Hegel's  Philosophy  of  Religion,  Chap. 
IV,  for  a  fuller  and  somewhat  varied  statement  and  criticism  of  this 
second  phase. 


266  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

worship  is  congenial  with  his  developing  intelligence.  It  helps 
him  to  name  and  to  imagine  the  object  of  his  religious  feeling. 
The  activity  in  this  sphere  is  that  of  imagination.  It  is  what 
we  may  call  mental  art — picture-thinking  taking  the  place  of 
picture-making.  It  is  thought  raising  us  out  of  sense.  Here 
the  object  and  the  content  of  the  religious  feeling  appear  in 
forms  corresponding  to  the  degree  of  culture  possessed.  The 
new  wine  is  first  put  into  old  bottles  and  then  new  bottles  are 
formed  out  of  the  fragments  of  the  bursted  old  ones. 

This  mental  art  of  picture  conceptions  advances,  bodying 
forth  in  less  sensuous  forms  and  in  more  abstract  language  the 
content  of  the  religious  feeling  they  help  to  quicken.  The  sav- 
age indulges  in  rude  sensuous  art,  or  combines  it  with  rude 
mental  art,  personifying  earth,  air  and  sky.  The  Christian 
child  is  met  in  this  phase  of  activity  with  Christian  names  and 
symbols,  which  help  him  to  higher  conceptions  of  what  he  feels 
blindly  stirring  in  his  soul.  They  do  not  create,  but  only  help 
develop  his  religious  life  in  more  rational  form.  The  more  ab- 
stract form  of  conception,  i.  e.,  dogma,  is  of  little  use  here,  un- 
less it  be  accompanied  with  parable,  legend  and  narrative.  It 
is  the  time  that  religion  is  nourished  on  narrative-metaphor. 
The  Bible  contains  a  good  proportion  of  such  food  for  the 
young,  and  Christian  history,  especially  in  heroic  and  martyr 
days,  furnishes  more.  But  these  should  be  supplemented  by 
current  religious  literature,  comparable  with  that  furnished  our 
young  people  by  St.  Nicholas  and  The  Youth's  Companion,  in- 
stead of  the  autumnal  leaflets  and  childish  Sunday-school  books. 

By  means  of  literature  the  Divine  Educator  co-works  in  de- 
veloping and  strengthening  the  bond  between  Himself  and  the 
growing  child.  Such  narrative-metaphors  are  winged,  and 
bear  the  young  soul  aloft  to  the  very  heart  of  God.  It  is  the 
very  sustenance  for  which  young  souls  are  hungry,  and  mere 
catechetical  instruction  in  abstract  theology  is  the  veriest  chaff 
to  chafe  and  wither  their  aspirations,  unless  it  be  judiciously 


PSYCHOLOGICAL  FORMS  OF  RELIGION  267 

concealed  in  fragrant  flowers  or  ripe  fruit.  Give  them  the  lus- 
cious grape,  and  not  merely  the  seed. 

Along  with  this  goes  the  religious  nurture,  through  public 
worship,  Qiurch  festivals  and  ceremonies.  The  Christian  year, 
followed  out  as  dramatically  as  possible,  is  the  best  teacher  of 
Christian  truth.  Besides,  all  this  brings  out  the  social  side  of 
religion,  and  helps  to  unite  them  with  God  through  uniting  with 
their  fellows. 

The  catechetical  and  dogmatic  period  soon  comes.  The  an- 
alyzing and  comparing  and  generalizing  activity  begins  its  work 
in  due  time.  Here  metaphors  harden  into  fact  or  are  general- 
ized into  dogma.  The  winged  metaphor  will  be  clipped.  The 
seed  of  the  ripe  fruit  will  be  sought.  The  soul  will  crave  defi- 
nite and  systematic  truth.  Subjective  feeling  and  its  imagina- 
tive vesture  must  find  a  basis  in  "Church  Doctrine  and  Bible 
Truth."  Systems  of  theology  are  often  not  much  in  advance 
of  this  period  of  abstract  conception. 

How  best  to  conceive  God,  and  how  best  represent  the  es- 
sential religious  relation  in  systematic  form,  is  the  question  at 
this  stage,  as  the  earlier  picture-form  becomes  more  abstract. 
This  is  the  time  for  positive  catechetical  instruction,  mingled 
with  sufficient  personal  and  rational  persuasion  to  win  assent. 
The  proper  ground  of  certitude  here  is  a  mingling  of  reason 
and  authority.  The  authoritative  teaching  of  the  Church,  prop- 
erly presented,  is  God's  method  of  further  development  of  the 
bond  between  himself  and  his  children.  What  great  Chris- 
tian teachers  and  what  the  Church  in  oecumenical  councils  have 
framed,  come  as  the  most  vocal  angels  of  the  truth. 

Such  teaching  is  the  media  of  the  Holy  Spirit  co-working 
with  the  communal  spirit.  It  represents  the  best  expression  of 
a  large  Christian  consciousness  through  many  centuries.  It  can 
and  should  be  given  with  authority.  Grounded  upon  the  vital 
idea  of  religion,  it  has  a  rational  authority  to  which  every  mem- 
ber, at  this  stage,  will  gladly  and  unconditionally  submit.  Such 
authoritative  teaching  is  the  craving  of  the  soul,  and  so  essential 


266  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

to  its  religious  life.  Here  such  authority  nourishes  and  quick- 
ens the  religious  life  of  the  member,  and  submerges  his  indi- 
vidual conceits  by  giving  him  the  one  Lord,  one  faith  and  one 
baptism  of  the  Universal  Church.  It  is  the  time  to  go  to  school ; 
the  time  when  the  mind  craves  teachers  and  longs  for  the  wis- 
dom that  is  beyond  it.  It  craves  to  know  what  it  ought  to  be- 
lieve. It  believes  spontaneously  on  authority.  It  is  also  the 
time  for  Bible  teaching,  for  Christian  education  through  sacred 
literature. 

The  Bible  is  the  Church's  record  of  the  historical  revelation 
upon  which  it  is  founded.  It  contams  the  word  of  God  in  all 
its  forms  of  literature.  It  is  also  the  vehicle  of  revelation  to 
the  inquiring  mind  and  longing  heart.  Protestants  have  made 
no  mistake  in  reverting  to  it  as  life-giving  and  authoritative. 
It  will  continue  to  be  both  of  these  when  the  fullest  and  freest 
criticism  shall  have  done  its  historical,  psychological  and  literary 
work  upon  it.  It  will  be  found  to  yield  a  much  more  wholesome 
authority  than  under  its  uncriticised  form  of  infallibility. 

Many  may  stop  contented  with  imagination  on  the  stand- 
point of  Church  services,  with  their  symbolism  and  ceremonial 
observances.  Others,  less  aesthetic,  stop  on  the  more  abstract 
form  of  dogma,  or  orthodox  belief.  Vulgar  Romanism  and 
Orthodoxy  illustrate  these  two  phases  of  conception,  of  sensuous 
and  mental  idolatry,  both  of  which  are  normal  phases  in  the  re- 
ligious process. 

(b).  Now  comes  the  period  of  reflection,  criticism  and 
doubt.  Reflection,  indeed,  forms  a  part  of  the  activity  which  re- 
ceives and  forms  definite  religious  conceptions  and  right  belief. 
But  it  does  not  stop  here.  The  normal  activity  of  this  phase  im- 
pels on  to  a  criticism  of  traditional  and  current  conceptions  on  its 
way  to  a  comprehension  of  the  necessity  of  religion  and  an  esti- 
mate of  their  comparative  worth  and  real  validity.  Perfect  rep- 
resentation or  conception  of  God  is  intrinsically  impossible, 
either  in  the  form  of  pictured  or  of  abstract  symbol.  Thought, 
in  seeking  this,  has  abstracted  the  essence  of  all  its  symbols  or 


PSYCHOLOGICAL  FORMS  OF  RELIGION  269 

precipitated  them  into  definite  and  logical  forms,  and  annexed 
reasons  thereto.  The  reflective  activity  now  impels  to  an  ex- 
amination of  these  forms,  and  of  the  reasons  alleged  for  them. 
It  is  essentially  critical  and  inevitably  sceptical.  It  realizes  the 
limitations  and  contradictions  of  attained  conceptions.  It  then 
seeks  to  vindicate  them  by  rationalistic  investigations  and  evi- 
dences, only  to  multiply  doubts.  This  is  a  necessary  phase  in 
the  life  of  every  ingenuously  thoughtful  Christian  and  Church. 
It  is  the  work  of  the  spirit  criticising  its  own  inadequate  crea- 
tion. It  is  the  normal  activity  of  the  human  spirit  responsive 
to  new  revelations  from  the  Divine  Spirit.  It  is  not  an  alien 
force,  but  the  implicit  infinite  energizing  through  and  above  the 
inadequate  forms  of  its  hitherto  realization  in  the  finite  spirit. 
Such  criticism  is  the  normal  activity  of  the  growing  human 
spirit  responsive  to  the  Divine  Spirit's  new  revelation,  of  which 
it  may  scarcely  be  conscious.  The  advocatus  diaboli  cannot 
prevent  the  canonization  of  such  temporary  doubt  as  sane  and 
saintly.  Dogma  making  and  dogma  sustaining,  straining, 
breaking  and  re-formation  are  all  the  normal  work  of  the  same 
phase  of  thought,  as  understanding,  on  its  way  to  the  compre- 
hension of  the  concrete  rationality  of  Catholic  symbols.  It  must 
reflect  upon  the  various  musts  which  have  hitherto  been  control- 
ling. It  is  the  inherently  just  and  normal  demand  of  the  hu- 
man spirit  to  know  the  source  and  ground  of  these  musts;  to 
find  a  rationale  of  the  authority  of  Bible,  Church  and  reason. 

The  authority  of  Bible  and  Church  may  be  rudely  ques- 
tioned by  the  reason  that  finally  questions  itself.  Its  aim  is  to 
see  what  it  is  in  them  that  makes  the  Bible,  Church  and  reason 
worthy  authorities.  Much  of  this  criticism  is  directed  against 
accidental,  temporary  and  local  conceptions  of  Christianity, 
which  are  inherently  false  to  its  spirit  and  purpose.  It  is  the 
attempt  to  reconceive  Christ  under  the  changed  conditions  of 
modern  science  and  thought.  This  task  of  reformation  is  laid 
upon  many  Christians  and  many  ages.  What  we  call  revivals 
and  reformations  are  only  more  emphatic  workings  of  this 


270  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

Spirit  in  the  Christian  community.  It  is  the  dynamic  of  the 
Christian  Zeitgeist  itself,  impelling  to  more  comprehensive  and 
vital  knowledge  of  Christ,  and  should  lead,  on  the  one  hand,  to 
the  throwing  aside  the  accumulated  rubbish  of  other  periods, 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  to  the  recovering  and  holding  fast  all 
that  is  good  in  previous  forms  of  Christianity.  From  the  moth- 
er's knee  to  the  grave ;  from  Bethlehem  to  the  New  Jerusalem, 
the  Christian  man  and  Church  have  this  reflective,  critical  task 
to  perform,  in  order  to  advance  in  Christian  knowledge  and  life. 
It  is  a  process  of  negating  truth  by  affirming  fuller  truth. 

Half  of  current  scepticism  comes  from  the  pressing  upon 
this  generation  outgrown  conceptions  and  imperfect  develop- 
ments of  the  Gospel.  To  acknowledge  frankly  the  necessary 
imperfection  of  progress  is  not  to  detract  from  the  Gospel,  but 
is  to  take  away  the  edge  of  half  the  criticism.  To  attempt  a 
readjustment  of  the  letter  to  the  spirit  of  Christianity;  to  re- 
conceive  Christianity,  if  you  will,  in  terms  of  modern  thought 
and  imagery;  to  put  the  spirit  in  new  forms;  to  abrogate  the 
old  letter  in  its  fulfillment  in  the  new — something  like  this  is 
the  problem  set  for  the  defender  of  the  faith  to-day.  To  ac- 
knowledge that  Christianity  has  often  been  bound  up  with  im- 
perfect views  of  science,  history,  philosophy  and  politics ;  and 
with  poor  mechanical  views  of  God,  the  world  and  man ;  and 
that  to-day  we  are  trying  to  free  the  spirit  from  these  limita- 
tions and  from  the  letter  of  theological  and  ecclesiastical  dog- 
matism with  which  it  has  been  unduly  hampered,  is  to  win 
sympathetic  hearing  and  help,  when  otherwise  we  would  meet 
with  no  vital  response. 

When  this  critical  activity  is  abstract,  it  busies  itself  with 
finding  grounds  or  reasons  pro  and  con.  It  takes  Christianity 
out  of  its  concrete  process  and  treats  it  abstractly  as  chiefly 
logical  definitions.  It  proves  and  disproves  and  generally 
ends,  unless  it  becomes  concrete,  in  that  negative  form  which 
should  only  be  a  mid  station.  This  abstract  criticism  is  known 
as  that  of  common  rationalism.     The  Aufkldrung,  Eclair cisse- 


PSYCHOLOGICAL  FORMS  OF  RELIGION  271 

ment  and  Rationalism  were  the  three  national  forms  of  the 
"age  of  reason."  The  eighteenth  century  should  have  sufficed 
for  this  narrow  sort  of  mental  work.  But  it  continues  even  in 
this  twentieth  century  in  its  senile  form  of  agnosticism.  It 
has  ultimately  doubted  itself  as  the  organ  of  truth. 

It  is  only  when  the  spirit's  activity  droops  and  stops  its 
work  at  this  abstract  negative  stage  that  doubt  can  be  called 
sinful.  It  is  then  putting  the  absolute  emphasis  on  subjective 
reason.  It  is  then  non-human,  non-rational,  a  violation  of  the 
binding  relation  between  God  and  man  through  historical  and 
social  media.  Such  absolute  negativity  of  subjectivism  is  the 
very  essence  of  the  devil.  No  one  is  more  to  be  pitied  and  no 
one  is  more  to  be  dreaded  than  the  man  who  has  stuck  fast  in 
the  mire  of  this  standpoint.  It  is  the  natural  penalty  of 
thought  abstracted  from  action  and  institution.  It  is  the  pen- 
alty of  holding  to  Christianity  as  chiefly  logical  doctrine.  For 
belief  is  rarely  the  outcome  of  formal  logical  procedure. 

Much  of  the  prevalent  skepticism,  however,  is  earnest, 
serious,  wistful,  and  not  Mephistophelian.  It  is  within  the 
church  in  which  its  martyrs  have  been  nurtured.  It  is  normal. 
Puritanism,  in  its  day,  and  Anglo-Catholicism  both  doubted 
protested  and  deformed  as  well  as  reformed  the  contemporary 
forms  of  faith  and  life.  They  appealed  from  a  present  to  a 
higher  conception  of  Christianity.  The  New  Theology  is  but 
another  illustration  of  the  same  activity.  Faith  is  at  the  bot- 
tom of  such  work.  It  is  the  outworking  of  a  higher  concep- 
tion of  Christianity  in  the  common  Christian  consciousness. 
The  real  ground  of  criticism  is  here  the  real  ground  of  cer- 
titude in  this  transition  epoch.  It  is  faith's  apprehension  of  a 
deeper  and  larger  revelation  breaking  forth  from  fettered 
Bible,  Church  and  reason.  It  is  the  spirit  negating,  in  order 
to  reform,  its  inadequate  conceptions — often,  indeed,  only  an 
effort  to  understand,  that  it  may  hold  with  stronger  conviction 
its  catholic  heritage.  In  this  is  seen  the  infinite  cunning  of 
the  guiding  Spirit  in  spiritually  minded  men  and  in  the  Chris- 


272  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

tian  community.  It  is  letting  doubt  have  its  way  while  using 
it  as  an  instrument  to  accomplish  higher  aims.  The  normal 
end  of  such  doubt  is  a  comprehension  of  the  natural  and  per- 
sistent co-relation  and  co-working  of  the  Divine  and  human 
spirit  in  historic  process,  which  explains  and  vindicates  at 
comparative  worth  all  previous  conceptions  and  institutions. 

This  can,  from  the  nature  of  the  case,  now  come  only  from 
a  genuine  comprehension  of  the  fact  of  the  Incarnation  and 
its  historic  effect  in  life,  thought  and  institution.  The  religion 
of  the  Incarnation  is  the  concrete  form  of  reason  that  meets 
and  fulfills  the  outworn  abstract  reason  of  this  stage.  Having 
proved  to  its  satisfaction  in  agnosticism,  that  its  own  sub- 
jective ideals  were  not  rational,  it  turns  to  the  real  to  find  the 
concrete  objective  rational.  If  it  arrives  at  a  comprehensive 
view,  at  a  philosophy  of  history  at  all,  it  must  find  in  the  re- 
ligion of  the  Incarnation  the  ripest  and  ultimate  form  of  ra- 
tionality. With  Aristotle  philosophy  was  a  thoughtful  com- 
prehension of  the  encyclopaedia  of  Greek  life  and  experience; 
with  Hegel  it  was  the  same  speculative  comprehension  of  the 
concrete  experience  of  Christendom.  That  is  the  objective 
matter  of  this  phase  of  the  activity  of  thought  which  we  have 
called 

(c)  Comprehension  as  the  highest  form  of  knowing.  We 
are  chiefly  concerned  with  the  mode  of  its  activity,  rather  than 
with  its  contents.  Its  mode  is  that  of  insight,  system,  of  corre- 
lation of  all  its  relativities  into  a  self-rf  lated  organic  process.  It 
is  thought  looking  behind  and  before  all  previous  phases,  and 
comprehending  them  as  vital  elements  of  a  totality.  It  is 
concrete  experience  taking  full  account  of  itself,  winging  its 
flight  from  both  earthly  and  airy  abstractions.  It  is  the  in- 
coming of  the  tidal  wave,  to  flood  the  little  pools  left  here  and 
there,  and  to  restore  their  continuity  with  the  great  ocean.  It 
is  an  overcoming  of  previous  standpoints  in  one  that  correlates 
and  embraces  them  all  in  a  system  which  is  self-related.  It 
rises  to  the  conception  of  the  necessity  of  self-consciousness, 


PSYCHOLOGICAL  FORMS  OF  RELIGION  273 

which  is  perfect  freedom.  The  heart  of  this  system  is  the 
primal,  persistent  and  vital  bond  between  God  and  man,  or 
religion.  The  result  of  its  activity,  as  I  have  said,  is  condi- 
tioned by  its  subject-matter  to-day.  That  subject-matter  is 
the  religion  of  the  Incarnation;  and  philosophy  only  reaches 
its  ultimate  insight  by  a  comprehension  of  that  which  is. 

With  many  Christian  thinkers  the  activity  of  the  spirit 
does  not  persist  unto  this  goal,  where  the  wounds  of  reason 
are  healed  by  reason;  where  the  ground  of  authority  is  self- 
contained  and  self-necessitated  through  a  profound  synthesis 
of  them  all.  Either  dogma  or  doubt  catches  and  holds  them. 
They  remain  in  either  one  or  the  other  of  these  phases  of  com- 
mon rationalism.  And  yet  the  spirit's  demand  and  possibility 
is  to  make  this  ein  Ueberwundener  Standpunkt.  Often  it  is 
only  implicitly  overcome.  It  is  overcome  in  that  vital  act  of 
faith  which  we  may  call  abbreviated  knowledge.  It  is  over- 
come practically,  but  not  in  the  way  of  thought.  Philosophy  is 
only  the  making  explicit  for  thought,  what  is  contained  in  the 
ordinary  Christian  consciousness;  only  seeing  the  necessity  of 
the  real  freedom  in  God's  service;  the  realization  of  the  bond 
between  God  and  man  contained  in  the  consciousness  of  par- 
don, peace  and  communion  with  God  through  the  incarnate 
Word.  It  is  the  discovery  of  the  logic  of  the  Logos  in  Chris- 
tian experience  and  history.  It  accepts  Christianity  as  the 
manifestation,  the  positive  form  of  the  absolute  religion,  affirm- 
ing in  its  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation  the  essential  kinship  of 
the  human  with  the  Divine  Spirit.  It  is  the  only  thing  that 
will  save  those  who  have  passed  into  the  critical,  doubting 
stage,  from  either  a  hopeless  scepticism  or  an  arbitrary  sub- 
mission to  a  non-intelligent  power,  which  is  the  essence  of 
superstition. 

Unsophisticated  piety  has  no  need  of  this.    But  how  little 

of  current  religion  is  unsophisticated.     How  thoroughly  the 

rationalism    of   the    understanding   has    laid    hold   upon    the 

majority  of  Christians.    They  are  asking  and  seeking  earnestly 

18 


274  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

for  reasons  for  their  religion.  Current  apologetics,  or  external 
reasons,  may  temporarily  satisfy  many.  But  their  inadequacy 
is  also  keenly  realized  by  many  others.  They  demand  a  suffi- 
cient reason,  an  adequate  First  Principle,  which  validates  all 
proofs  and  authorities.  Reflection,  or  the  mere  reasoning  of 
the  understanding,  is  incapable  of  reaching  this.  The  only 
question  then  is,  whether  thought  shall  and  can  persist  to  its 
fruition,  or  whether  the  spirit  shall  faint  in  hopeless  agnosti- 
cism, offering  itself  an  unworthy  sacrifice  to  either  doubt  or 
dogma.  But  here  we  must  not  neglect  the  value  of  the  practi- 
cal reason,  the  demand  for  religion  in  our  nature,  and  the  ade- 
quacy of  current  forms  to  meet  this  demand.  We  shall  find 
that  the  theoretical  can  never  reach  its  convincing  result  with- 
out inclusion  of  the  practical  reason. 

In  this  work,  thought  passes  in  appreciative  critical  review 
all  the  categories  which  it  has  hitherto  used  in  rationalizing 
experience,  impelled  onward  to  an  absolute  First  Principle 
which  will  include  and  explain  them  all ;  that  is,  it  seeks  tor  a 
self- related  and  self- relating  system,  or  a  science  of  forms  of 
thought,  some  of  which  Theology,  as  well  as  Science,  uses  in 
its  work.  It  is  restless  till  it  rests  in  a  sufficient  First  Principle, 
adequate  to  explain  all  experience.  Being,  substance,  force, 
cause,  co-relation,  external  finality,  an  extra-mundane  Deity 
arbitrarily  creating  and  destroying,  are  categories  which,  when 
used  as  first  principles,  give  rise  to  positivism,  pantheism,  ideal- 
ism, deism  and  agnosticism.  But  concrete  religious  experi- 
ence to-day  is  such  as  to  render  all  such  interpretations  inade- 
quate. The  abstract  supernaturalism  of  much  theology,  as 
well  as  abstract  mechanical  naturalism,  has  failed  to  reach  the 
adequate  conception  of  God  which  makes  creation,  the  Incar- 
nation and  restoration  possible. 

Thought  is  restless  beyond  these  conceptions  till  it  reaches 
the  thought  of  an  Absolute  Self-consciousness  who  manifests 
Himself  creatively  in  the  finite  world  and  man,  binding  them 
back  to  Himself.     It  declines  any  conception  which  makes  na- 


PSYCHOLOGICAL  FORMS  OF  RELIGION  275 

ture,  man  and  God  to  be  discordant  and  irreconcilable  ideas. 
It  is  especially  concerned  to  find  the  conception  which  binds 
man  and  God  in  the  congenial  bond  which  religion  implies. 
Beginning  with  the  individual  finite  mind,  it  passes  through  all 
the  encompassing  social  circles,  finding  in  the  highest  no  place 
for  "the  religion  of  humanity."  Religion  demands  a  bond 
with  a  super-humanity. 

Beginning  with  the  conception  of  an  abstract  supra-mun- 
dane Deity,  it  passes  through  all  theories  of  creation  till  it 
reaches  the  conception  of  the  concrete  absolute  Self-conscious- 
ness that  must  create,  and  realize  himself  in  his  offspring. 
Abstract  mechanical  necessity,  of  course,  is  here  entirely  out  of 
the  question.  It  is  the  free  necessity  of  his  own  concrete 
triune  Personality  which  leads  to  creation  and  its  culmination 
in  the  Incarnation.  Such  a  First  Principle  contains  in  its  very 
nature  organic  bond  with  his  offspring. 

And  in  the  light  of  this  alone  is  finite  spirit,  its  nature,  his- 
tory and  destiny,  intelligible.  Here  religion  is  seen  to  be 
necessary.  Its  elements  of  revelation  and  faith  are  in  the  re- 
ciprocal process  of  the  Divine  Spirit  to  the  human,  and  of  the 
human  spirit  to  the  divine. 

Philosophy  does  not  create  this  conception  of  the  First 
Principle  out  of  nothing.  It  is  not  an  abstract  a  priori  concep- 
tion. It  seeks  for  the  logical  ultimate,  and  the  chronological 
presupposition  of  all  the  other  categories  under  which  experi- 
ence is  alone  possible  for  man.  These  categories  or  conditions 
of  thinking  can  only  be  found  by  reflection  upon  actual  experi- 
ence. Philosophy  is  simply  the  science  of  these  categories, 
implicit  in  the  experience  even  of  the  most  unreflecting;  some 
of  them  becoming  more  explicit  in  the  special  sciences.  It  is 
not  a  knowledge  of  all  things,  but  a  comprehension  of  the  un- 
derlying conditions  of  all  knowledge  in  a  system  with  an  ade- 
quate concrete  generic  First  Principle.  Here  its  special  in- 
sight is  directed  to  the  theological  conditions  of  religious  ex- 
perience, or,  in  particular,  of  the  content  of  the  Christian 


276  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

consciousness  as  to  sin  and  redemption,  or  of  alienated  and  of 
restored  communion  (religion)  with  God  through  Jesus  Christ. 
In  other  words,  it  aims  at  comprehensive  insight  into  the  ra- 
tionality of  Christian  experience,  or  at  philosophical  theology 
founded  upon  historical  and  dogmatic  theology. 

It  does  not  destroy  or  transcend  religion,  which  is  the 
most  vital  realization  of  the  bond  between  God  and  man.  Re- 
ligion is  the  highest,  the  complete  practical,  reconciliation,  and 
is  not  destined  to  lose  itself  in  philosophy.  Philosophy  does 
not  set  itself  above  religion,  but  only  above  partial  and  con- 
flicting interpretations  of  its  experience.  It  leads  us  to  know 
for  thought  and  in  thought,  as  reasonable  and  true  and  holy, 
what  religion  is  as  life  and  experience.  It  validates  this  ex- 
perience for  thought.  It  gives  the  highest  authority  to  re- 
ligion, by  demonstrating  its  absolute  and  not  merely  its  psy- 
chological necessity.  It  reaches  the  ultimate  ground  of  certi- 
tude, which  was  only  implicit  and  unthought  of  in  the  stage 
of  feeling. 

It  reaches,  too,  certitude  as  to  objective  religion.  It  sees 
the  necessity  and  worth  of  all  creeds  and  institutions  as  the 
outcome  of  the  religious  bond — the  work  of  the  spirit  of  man 
inspired  by  the  Spirit  of  God  in  a  course  of  divine  education 
of  the  race.  This  spirit  of  comprehension  is  never  envious. 
It  often  romanticizes,  growing  tender  and  reverent  in  its  ap- 
preciation of  the  forms  of  the  earlier  stages  in  which  it  has 
been  nourished.  If  it  has  passed  thoroughly  through  the  scep- 
tical stage,  it  can  never  be  ungenerous  in  its  estimate  of  either 
dogma  or  doubt.  Its  insight  into  the  truth  of  the  heart  of  all 
religion;  its  ripe  conviction  of  the  necessary  organic  com- 
munion of  God  and  man;  its  comprehension  of  the  process 
of  the  Divine  education,  or  its  philosophy  of  history,  enables 
it  to  find  itself,  to  make  itself  at  home  at  the  humblest  domes- 
tic altar  as  well  as  in  the  grandest  cathedral,  always  holding 
the  critical  faculty  in  abeyance,  as  having  been  satisfied  once 
for  all.     It  thus  gives  the  highest  authority  in  religion,  as 


PSYCHOLOGICAL  FORMS  OF  RELIGION  277 

deduced  from  and  implied  in  itself,  as  necessary.  Holy  and 
reverent  is  this  spirit  of  insight,  for  it  is  the  very  Spirit  of  God 
which  has  bound  the  devil  of  doubt — a 

"Part  of  that  power  understood, 
Which  always  wills  the  bad,  and  always  works  the  good." 

It  does  not  place  itself  above  religion,  again,  because  it  is 
the  child  of  religion.  It  reaches  its  conception  of  God  only 
because  religion  has  already  realized  the  essential  bond  be- 
tween God  and  man.  In  particular,  it  is  the  child  of  Christi- 
anity— the  thoughtful  comprehension  of  its  own  experience. 
This  starts  from  the  culmination  of  the  historical  manifestation 
of  the  bond  between  God  and  man.  Jesus  Christ  manifested 
this  bond  perfectly.  He  was  a  man  manifesting  perfect  abso- 
lute union  with  God.  Rational  truth  can  only  be  apprehended 
on  condition  of  its  existence  in  natural  and  secular  form.  It 
must  be  immanent  in  a  historical  process.  The  man  Jesus  did 
not  primarily  appeal  to  thought.  He  lived  his  practical  life  in 
the  world.  He  came  unto  his  own,  and  won  them  by  his  life. 
He  became  the  fulfillment  of  the  supernatural  order  implicit  in 
all  previous  history,  the  consummation  of  the  self-necessitated 
Divine  act  of  creation  in  time.  Here  the  hitherto  immanent 
and  constitutional  co-working  of  God  with  man  came  to  per- 
fect manifestation.  God  became  man  because  humanity  was 
an  essential  phase  of  his  own  life.  Here  his  perfect  self-con- 
sciousness was  manifested.  Son  of  man  and  Son  of  God  were 
manifested  as  congenial  and  inherent  parts  of  the  Divine  Self- 
consciousness.  Here  was  reached  the  axis  of  the  world's  his- 
tory, or,  for  what  concerns  us  at  present,  the  axis  of  the  world's 
thought  about  God  and  man;  for  we  are  still  abstracting  the 
concrete  thought  from  the  more  concrete  process  of  Christian 
life  and  institution. 

Christian  thought,  which  is  modern  thought,  starts  from 
the  sensuous  life  of  Christ  and  continues  following  the  secular 
extension  of  this  life  in  humanity.  This  has  been  the  woof  of 
which  thought  has  been  the  warp  in  the  concrete  web  of  the 


278  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

modern  world.  Previous  philosophy  had  been  an  attempted 
comprehension  of  the  relation  of  God  and  man  as  manifested 
in  human  experience.  With  the  advent  of  Christ  came  new 
and  fuller  experience.  It  did  not  appeal  primarily  to  thought. 
The  practical  experience  of  this  life  and  its  extension  in  the  life 
of  the  Christian  community  came  first.  But  thinking  is  an 
inherent  human  necessity  which  continued  in  the  Christian 
community.  It  was  self-necessitated  to  reflect  upon  and  ex- 
press in  intellectual  forms  the  content  of  its  experience.  The 
thought  activity  was  new  only  as  modified  by  its  subject  mat- 
ter. Thoughtful  men,  men  trained  in  philosophy,  became 
Christians,  and  Christians  became  thoughtful.  Hence  Chris- 
tian doctrines,  and  ultimately  Christian  creeds.  These  repre- 
sent the  most  catholic  thought  of  the  intellectual  aristocracy  of 
the  community,  thinking  upon  the  content  of  catholic  experi- 
ence. They  claimed  the  guidance  of  the  Holy  Spirit  gradu- 
ally leading  them  into  all  truth.  The  Nicene  symbol  repre- 
sents the  highest  and  the  most  oecumenical  expression  of  this 
catholic  thought.  This  gives  its  authority  to  the  completed 
Nicene  symbol. 

There  are  parts  of  this  symbol  which  can  have  their  proper 
authority  only  to  those  who  can  think  themselves  into  its  defini- 
tions and  see  how  it  states  ultimate  thought.  Such  thought 
should  be  the  goal  of  all  Christian  thinking  or  theology.  But 
all  such  knowledge  is  an  approximate  development  toward, 
rather  than  an  actual  attainment.  In  the  highest  speculative 
thought  and  in  the  most  oecumenical  creed  we  still  know  only 
in  part.  But,  for  the  understanding  of  the  Nicene  symbol, 
this  speculative  thought  is  necessary,  as  is  also  a  knowledge 
of  the  whole  history  of  the  age  which  gave  birth  to  it.  Hence 
its  general  use  in  public  worship  may  not  be  desirable.  Re- 
peating, parrot-like,  forms  of  sound  doctrine  without  any  con- 
ception of  their  sense,  is  a  pagan  custom  that  we  need  not  en- 
courage. The  Nicene  symbol  has  its  proper  use  in  church- 
councils  and  clerical  meetings.     But  perhaps  this  would  be  too 


PSYCHOLOGICAL  FORMS  OF  RELIGION  279 

great  a  restriction.  One  can  join  with  the  great  congrega- 
tion of  saints  of  the  centuries  in  hymning  this  beHef  in  the  full 
divinity  and  the  real  manhood  of  Jesus  Christ. 

Our  discussion  implies  a  distinction  between  what  is  au- 
thoritative for  comprehensive  thought,  and  the  much  larger 
part  of  dogma  which  consists  of  metaphorical  conceptions, 
partial  theories  and  inadequate  definitions  which  are  local  and 
transient — at  best,  only  truth  in  the  making.  It  is  this  por- 
tion, too,  about  which  much  of  the  anxious  thought  and  con- 
troversy and  doubt  of  our  day  is  concerned.  To  this  part  be- 
long theories  of  the  inspiration  of  the  Bible,  of  the  atonement, 
of  future  punishment,  of  the  method  of  the  creation  of  nature 
and  of  man.  Must  I  believe  them?  Do  we  believe  them? 
Have  they  believed  them?  If  so,  which  one  of  them,  and 
why?  Here  the  history  of  Christian  doctrine  can  aid  us 
greatly. 

To  the  doubting  and  harassed  Christian  asking  what  must 
I  believe  as  to  many  traditional  and  current  conceptions,  we 
may  answer :  Believe  them  only  so  far  as,  from  a  study  of  their 
history,  you  can  see  them  to  be  necessary  implications  of  the 
doctrine  of  the  Incarnation.  Take  them  at  a  relative  ration- 
ality, as  more  or  less  harmonious  with  the  general  Christian 
sentiment. 

The  oecumenical  creed  is  here  a  law  of  liberty.  But  it  is 
also  a  law  of  duty.  We  not  only  may,  but  we  must  freely  in- 
vestigate the  grounds  and  worth  of  all  other  conceptions 
Biblical  criticism  and  the  theory  of  creation  by  evolution,  the 
doctrines  of  the  future  life  and  of  the  atonement,  the  question 
of  Church  polity  and  ritual,  all  are  open  questions,  in  the  solu- 
tion of  which  we  must  take  our  part.  The  authoritative  must 
is  here  that  of  free  investigation,  instead  of  slavish  submission. 

Protestantism  repudiated  the  unethical  authority  of  an  un- 
holy Church,  but  soon  yielded  the  same  sort  of  blind  reverence 
to  the  Bible.  The  change  "was  not  wholly  a  mistake.  It  was 
the  most  spiritual  and  ethical  attitude  that  could  then  be  taken. 


28o  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

The  evil  grew  out  of  the  abuse  to  which  all  good  things  are 
subject.  Superstition  changed  this  living  word  into  a  dead 
letter.  It  was  given  the  place  assigned  by  pagans  to  their 
oracles,  or  by  Mohammedans  to  the  Koran.  Bibliolatry  be- 
came as  real  as  Mariolatry.  Orthodoxy  was  based  upon  a  lit- 
eral interpretation  of  an  infallible  oracle.  Hence  more  than 
half  the  honest  doubt  of  our  day.  Hence,  too,  the  form  of 
unevidencing  evidences,  serving  only  to  increase  scepticism. 

But  there  is  a  reformation  rapidly  taking  place  in  regard  to 
the  worth  and  authority  of  the  Bible,  almost  as  great  as  that 
accomplished  by  the  Reformation  as  to  the  authority  of  the 
Church.  Only  this  is  an  intellectual,  while  that  was  a  moral 
revolt.  It  may  take  generations  to  bring  men  generally  to  a 
recognition  of  the  rightful  spiritual  authority  of  the  Bible,  as 
it  has  taken  centuries  to  turn  the  tide  of  appreciation  in  favor 
of  recognizing  the  rightful  and  necessary  authority  of  the 
Church. 

Certainly  it  is  not  to  be  overlooked  that  a  total  revolution 
has  taken  place  in  our  day  in  the  conception  of  the  method  of 
revelation  and  inspiration.  Our  Bishops,  in  a  late  Pastoral 
Letter,  acknowledge  that  the  "advances  made  in  Biblical  re- 
search have  added  a  holy  splendor  to  the  crown  of  devout 
scholarship,"  and  mention  both  "shrinking  superstition  and  ir- 
reverent self-will"  as  earth-born  clouds  that  tend  to  obscure 
its  holy  light. 

We  can  barely  indicate  the  reformed  conception  of  the 
Bible  which  is  rapidly  replacing  the  old  one. 

The  Bible  is  literature.  It  is  sacred  literature.  It  is  the 
"survival  of  the  fittest"  of  the  sacred  literature  of  the  Jews 
and  of  the  early  Christians.  Like  the  creeds,  it  is  the  product 
of  the  Church,  and  at  the  same  time  the  fountain  and  the 
norm  of  Christian  life  and  doctrine.  It  is  a  record  of  revela- 
tion done  into  history;  a  record  of  the  historical  incarnation 
of  the  Son  of  God,  set  in  a  partial  preparation  for  it,  and  in  a 
partial   result   of   its   primitive    extension.     It   thus    contains 


PSYCHOLOGICAL  FORMS  OF  RELIGION  281 

God's  revelation.  It  is  a  vehicle  of  that  revelation.  It  is  it- 
self a  revelation  of  God  to  the  student  of  it,  and  to  the  whole 
Church.  It  is  not  errorless,  or  infallible,  or  of  equal  value 
throughout.  It  is  the  Book  of  the  Church  to  the  Church  and 
for  the  Church.  Hence  the  Christian  consciousness,  .rather 
than  individuals,  is  the  best  interpreter  of  it.  It  also,  in  turn, 
produces  and  gives  the  norm  of  development  to  the  life  and 
doctrine  of  the  Church.  It  is  a  living  word,  appealing  to  the 
mind  and  heart  and  conscience  after  criticism  has  done  its  ut- 
most work  upon  it. 

We  still  have  the  Bible.  The  Bible  and  the  Bible  only,  is 
the  Book  of  the  Church,  and  the  rule  of  faith.  But  we  do  not 
have — or  we  shall  not,  when  critical  study  shall  have  finished 
its  work — a  word-book  of  equally  valuable  proof-texts,  infal- 
lible in  toto  et  partibus.  Criticism  demonstrates  that  the  Bible 
is  a  record  of  divine  revelation  done  into  human  history  under 
the  limitations  of  the  mental  and  religious  culture  of  the  people 
of  current  times.  All  parts  are  not  of  equal  value.  Christ 
himself  and  his  apostles  criticised  the  morality  and  ritual  of 
the  Old  Testament.  Our  Gospels  are  a  fourfold  transcription 
of  inspired  teaching  in  the  Church  of  the  first  century.  The 
Church  was  before  the  New  Testament.  It  is  the  Church, 
founded  and  growing  under  the  limitations  of  historical  con- 
ditions, that  gives  us  our  authentic  record  of  the  life  of  Christ. 
Good  Churchmen  now  generally  say  that  the  orthodox  view 
of  the  Bible  as  a  verbally  infallible  text-book  has  never  been 
a  doctrine  of  the  Catholic  Church.,  I  believe  that  apologetics 
should  frankly  concede  this,  and  thus  free  Christianity  from 
the  hundred  criticisms  that  have  force  only  as  against  such  a 
theory — none  whatever  against  the  Bible  as  the  Book  of  books. 

So  as  to  liberty  and  duty  in  regard  to  other  open  questions. 
The  greatest  theologians  of  Christendom  have  always  main- 
tained this.  Only  zealots  and  party  politicians  have  flourished 
an  authoritative  must  over  Christians  in  such  questions.  But 
this  duty  demands  that  we  shall  try  to  get  at  the  heart,  at  the 


282  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

real  significance  of  such  conceptions  and  theories ;  to  modestly 
seek  to  understand  them  before  we  dare  call  them  irrational, 
after  the  short  and  easy  method  of  many  self-styled  rational- 
ists. Indeed,  the  historical  method  has  largely  replaced  this 
negative  rationalistic  method  even  with  unbelievers.  They, 
too,  thus  find  a  relative  justification  for  what  they  reject.  It 
remains  true,  however,  that  we  can  even  thus  only  accept  many 
traditional  conceptions  and  dogmas  in  a  Pickwickian  sense. 
Our  belief  in  them  will  accord  with  Bishop  Pearson's  curiously 
elliptical  definition  of  belief  as  "the  assent  to  that  which  is 
credible  as  credible" — i.  e.,  belief  is  belief  in  that  which  is  be- 
lievable as  believable. 

But  here  we  are  still  in  the  sphere  of  the  liberty  and  duty 
of  criticising  inadequate  metaphors  and  opinions.  The  task 
is  how  best  to  conceive  or  re-conceive  Christianity  through 
aid  of  past  conceptions,  and  also  through  the  aid  of  the 
changed  conceptions  furnished  by  modern  science  and  culture. 
We  cannot  be  chained  to  winged  or  to  petrified  metaphors  of 
a  past,  whose  whole  material  for  imagination  was  very  dif- 
ferent from  that  of  our  times.  We  cannot  accept  them  as  au- 
thoritative, but  must  create  the  best  We  can,  which  will  be  as 
congenially  authoritative  to  us  as  theirs  were  to  them.  More 
cannot  be  demanded.  The  modern  ideal  of  knowledge  is 
drawn  on  the  canvas  of  a  progressive  education  of  the  race. 
It  is  in  accordance  with  this  ideal  that  the  most  authoritative 
truth  for  one  people  or  age  may  have  but  relative  validity  for 
another.  Nor  should  the  value  of  metaphor  and  abstract 
dogma  as  media  of  the  divine  revelation  be  overlooked  in  this 
criticism  of  their  worth  as  scientific  knowledge.  Only  we 
must  not  seek  in  them  ultimate  ground  of  authority.  As  we 
pass  through  self-compelled  criticism  from  one  conception  to 
another,  we  are  finding  our  real  ground  to  be  "the  unity  of 
identity  and  diflFerence,"  of  dogma  and  doubt.  The  new  is 
better  than  the  old  only  as  it  contains  the  old  as  a  vital,  though 
transmuted,  element. 


PSYCHOLOGICAL  FORMS  OF  RELIGION  283 

But  even  in  the  most  concrete  historical  and  philosophic 
view  of  truth  we  are  still  too  abstract.  We  are  studying  Chris- 
tianity as  if  it  were  chiefly  a  system  of  intellectual  truth.  We 
are  abstracting  the  web  from  the  woof,  the  Logos  of  the  incar- 
nation from  the  whole  of  its  practical  extension.  We  have 
acknowledged  that  Christianity  must  be  done  into  history,  into 
concrete  life  and  institution,  before  it  could  be  seen  to  be  rea- 
son, just  as  the  earthly  life  of  Christ  was  essential  to  the  seeing 
him  as  the  Logos.  Philosophy,  then,  must  revert  to  this. 
Christianity  is  more  than  feeling  or  thinking.  It  is  also  deed. 
Theoretical  cognition  is  not  sufficient. 

"  Grey,  friend,  is  all  theory;  green 
Is  the  golden  tree  of  life." 

(3).  Religion  as  Willing. — ^We  have,  then,  to  notice  the 
third  form  in  which  religion  manifests  itself — that  of  willing. 

Comprehension  has  to  embrace  not  only  the  grey  form  of 
right  thinking,  but  also  the  green  tree  of  golden  fruit — the  ex- 
tension of  the  incarnation  in  the  practical  life  of  the  social 
body.  Religion  is  not  merely  the  feeling  or  seeing  the  bond 
between  God  and  man;  it  is  also  the  determination  of  life  by 
the  bond.  It  is  willing  to  be  God-like.  This  is  the  building 
power,  the  realizing  of  the  extension  of  the  incarnation  to  the 
sanctifying  the  whole  of  secular  life.  It  is  the  Rome-element 
constantly  accompanying  or  preceding  the  other  phases  of  re- 
ligion. It  posits,  puts  in  concrete  form  the  certitude  of  both 
feeling  and  thought.  It  is  founded  upon  the  rock  of  secular 
reality.  It  was  present  at  the  giving  of  the  Law  upon  Sinai, 
in  the  formation  of  the  Jewish  Theocracy  and  building  its 
temple,  as  it  was  in  Rome  becoming  the  imperial  mistress  of 
the  secular  world.  This  bed-rock  certitude  has  never  left  it- 
self without  a  witness  and  an  organ  in  the  form  of  institutions 
which  have  been  the  media  of  all  our  culture.  This  has  been 
the  activity  of  what  Kant  called  the  "Practical  Reason,"  or 
creative  reason  moulding  the  concrete  into  accordance  with  its 


284  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

norm.  It  does  the  truth,  and  thus  creates  the  forms  which  in 
turn  nourish  and  educate  it. 

This  Rome-element,  or  the  "Practical  Reason,"  is  eternal, 
always  placing  itself  above  past  history  by  making  new  his- 
tory, but  always  vindicating  past  history  by  the  new  which  that 
past  alone  makes  possible.  It  may  be  called  the  petrifying  ele- 
ment of  religion.  It  catches  and  fixes  in  progressive  station- 
ary form  the  fleeting  phase  of  feeling  and  the  restless  dialectic 
of  thought,  and  yet  ever  uses  the  new  and  more  ample  materi- 
als they  furnish  for  its  work. 

Man  does  what  he  thinks  and  feels.  Man  thinks  what  he 
does.  Man  is  what  he  does.  If  we  were  compelled  to  choose 
between  any  one  of  these  abstractions,  we  should  say,  Man  is 
what  he  does.  The  zvill  is  the  man.  It  is  the  concrete  unity 
of  all  the  elements  of  man.  Any  act  of  will  is  the  expression 
of  the  whole  man  as  he  is  at  that  time.  It  is  his  character,  his 
law,  his  authority,  his  certitude.  Doing,  he  is  ever  organizing 
his  self,  and  ever  rising  on  stepping-stones  of  past  deeds  to 
higher  ones.     Doing,  he  knows,  the  doctrine  of  God. 

But  man  is  social,  and  pre-eminently  so  in  religion.  The 
kingdom  of  heaven  on  earth  has  from  the  first  been  a  social 
community.  Its  deed  is  its  real  creed.  Hence  the  worth  of 
what  is  called  the  moral  argument  for  Christianity — its  visible 
power  in  regenerating  and  softening  mankind  beyond  all  dis- 
quisitions of  philosophers  and  all  exhortations  of  moralists. 
This  is  also  the  truth  in  the  argument  that  Christianity  is  a 
life  of  God  in  the  soul  of  man,  rather  than  a  creed ;  an  imma- 
nent regenerative  power,  a  mystical  presence  that  moves  the 
homesick  soul  to  find  its  home  in  God  even  in  the  ordinary 
routine  of  secular  life.  This  too  is  the  truth  in  the  argument 
from  personal  experience  of  the  members  of  this  social  body. 
Christianity  finds  them,  meets  their  religious  needs,  nourishes 
their  spiritual  life,  proves  its  adequacy  to  human  need  in  all 
joyful  and  trying  experiences.  Its  conceptions  of  life,  of  duty, 
of  forgiveness,  of  eternal  life — all  the  deeper  moral  and  re- 


PSYCHOLOGICAL  FORMS  OF  RELIGION  285 

ligious  needs  of  the  human  heart — are  met  in  the  presentation 
of  the  Gospel  by  the  Church  to  its  members.  This  social  re- 
ligion is  a  religion  of  both  inspiration  and  consolation.  The 
Church  meets  and  incorporates  the  new-born  babe  into  its 
motherly  bosom  in  holy  baptism.  Throughout  life  it  lifts  up 
its  perpetual  Eucharist  to  meet  his  needs,  whether  he  be  cry- 
ing De  Profiindis  or  shouting  In  Excelsis.  At  death  it  trans- 
fers him  from  the  home  below  to  the  home  above — from  the 
Church  militant  to  the  Church  triumphant.  The  certitude  of 
these  blessings  comes  from  experiencing  them.  It  is  the  deed 
of  Christ's  life  in  the  members  of  his  social  body. 

But  Christianity  does  not  only  realize  itself  in  the  practical 
life  of  its  members,  it  also  institutes  itself  in  social  organiza- 
tion. Here  we  approach  perilous  ground,  or  rather,  we  have 
to  sail  between  the  Scylla  of  an  abstract  universal  and  an  ab- 
stract individual  conception  of  the  Church.  What  is  the  form 
of  the  Holy  Catholic  Church  in  which  all  Christians  believe? 
We  would  fain  escape  from  the  strife  of  tongues  by  calling  in- 
stituted Christianity  the  religious  kingdom  or  the  republic  of 
God — the  communion  of  saints  on  earth.  That  is  the  com- 
prehensive truth.  We  limit  ourselves  to  a  few  expository 
statements. 

Our  conception  of  the  Church  depends  upon  our  conception 
of  the  First  Principle.  If  God  is  conceived  as  abstract  tran- 
scendence, the  whole  of  religion  necessarily  receives  a  semi- 
mechanical  form.  Transcendence  implies  a  dualism,  a  gulf, 
rather  than  a  bond  between  God  and  man,  that  can  only  be 
bridged  in  a  mechanical  way.  The  incarnation  and  its  ex- 
tension alike  suffer  from  this  partial  conception  of  God.  Ro- 
manism is  the  standing  illustration  of  the  form  of  institution 
realized  under  this  conception.  High-Anglicanism  is  but  its 
feebler  counterfeit.  This  form  has  had,  and  still  has,  in  some 
phases  of  civilization,  its  worth  and  relative  justification.  But 
to-day  it  is  under  the  more  genial  congenial  conception  of  the 
Divine  immanence  that  we  get  the  most  comprehensive  view 


286  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

of  the  Kingdom  of  God  as  the  whole  of  the  faithful  in  every 
form  of  instituted  Christianity. 

There  is  no  universal  external  corporate  form  that  is  in- 
clusive. The  Holy  Catholic  Church  is  like  the  Universal 
State,  that  federation  of  nations  and  Parliament  of  man  to 
which  individual  states  are  subordinate  and  which  is  the 
world's  tribunal,  to  pronounce  and  execute  judgment  upon 
them.  Though  Episcopacy  be  essential  to  the  total  corporate 
organization  of  Church  and  State,  yet  one  must  needs  be  stone- 
blind  not  to  see  churches  standing  without  it  to-day.  The  im- 
manent Spirit  was  present  in  earlier  forms,  and  now  He  is  pres- 
ent in  modern  forms  of  Church  and  State,  which  have  been 
inextricably  interwoven  throughout  history.  Protestant  com- 
munions are  also  forms  of  instituted  Christianity,  closely  in 
sympathy  with  modern  states,  which  base  their  constitutions 
on  the  principles  of  freedom  and  respect  for  personality. 
Protestants  necessarily  regard  the  question  of  policy  or  consti- 
tution from  a  different  point  of  view  from  that  of  Romanists. 
It  is  not  an  article  of  faith  with  them.  The  Romanist  con- 
ceives of  instituted  Christianity  as  a  mechanical,  unethical 
form  of  authority.  We  recognize  its  institution  as  an  ethical 
and  historical  process  of  the  spirit  immanent  in  Chrstian  na- 
tions and  communities.  This  springs  from  our  conception  of 
the  First  Principle  as  concrete  Self-Consciousness,  or  Love, 
self-necessitated  to  create,  and  to  relate  Himself  to  his  created 
offspring.  It  is  a  part  of  the  philosophy  of  history  which  is 
quite  modern,  and  yet  Christian. 

Romanism  is  one  phase  of  this  process.  But  modern 
Christendom  has  passed  beyond  Rome  as  ultimate.  It  is 
largely  Teutonic  and  Anglo-Saxon.  Still  it  is  only  a  part  of 
a  process  which  must  conserve  the  Greek  and  Roman  element. 
The  Greek  element  stands  for  philosophy  or  orthodoxy,  the 
Roman  for  law  or  polity,  and  the  Anglo-Saxon  for  free  spirit 
or  ethical  personality.  Creed  and  polity  are  permanent  ele- 
ments  which    Protestantism    should   conserve    with    its    free 


PSYCHOLOGICAL  FORMS  OF  RELIGION  287 

spirit  without  being  seduced  back  to  the  stagnant  orthodoxy 
of  the  Greek  Chiirch  or  to  the  terrible  tyranny  of  Roman  ec- 
clesiasticism.  This  is  our  task.  It  has  its  dangers,  but  it  is 
a  duty.  The  Christian  consciousness  is  not  content  with  so 
many  Protestant  variations.     It  yearns  for  unity. 

We  are  still  in  the  sphere  of  history  in  the  making,  but 
take  our  part  in  it  under  the  conception  of  the  Divine  imma- 
nence. This  conception  is  monistic  and  organic.  It  is  the  cate- 
gory of  comprehension  or  of  totality,  self-active  and  self-re- 
alizing. Its  chief  danger  is  that  of  overlooking  differences, 
instead  of  reducing  them  to  organic  elements.  But  it  is  the 
conception  which  steers  clear  of  all  subjective  individualism, 
and  is  only  consistent  with  the  social  view  of  man  in  all 
spheres. 

Thus  it  finds  its  ground  of  authority  in  the  communal  Chris- 
tian consciousness,  and  strives  to  make  this  as  oecumenical  as 
possible.  There  are  always  relatively  catholic  institutions. 
These  have  been  formative  of  every  Christian  person.  Only 
in  and  through  life  in  some  form  of  them  has  he  become  a 
Christian.  They  have  been  God-given  conditions  to  limit,  in 
order  to  educe  and  realize,  the  individual.  To  be  a  member 
of  some  form  of  instituted  Christianity  is  essential  to  one's  be- 
ing able  to  appreciate  its  rationality.  It  is  from  within  such 
nurture  that  doubt  may  come  to  force  him  to  wider  concep- 
tions or  more  catholic  fellowship.  Authority  after  authority, 
as  teacher  after  teacher,  may  be  transcended  on  the  way  to 
higher  thought  and  life.  But  it  must  always  be  within  some 
concrete  form  of  Christian  institution.  The  apprehension  of 
its  rationality  comes  after  the  experience  of  having  our  best- 
self  educed  by  the  process.  The  larger  our  fellowship,  the 
larger  authority  and  rationality  we  shall  be  able  to  recognize 
in  this  conditioning  Christian  organization. 

Instituted  Christianity  needs  and  can  have  no  grounds  or 
evidence  strictly  external.  It  vindicates  itself,  as  all  organisms 
do.     For  comprehension,  it  is  reason  done  into  institution,  the 


^SB  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

sum  total  of  the  outcome  of  the  consciousness  of  the  vital  bond 
between  God  and  man  in  historic  process.  The  Church,  in 
every  form,  is  a  partial  organization  of  this  recognition. 
Submission  to  its  authority  in  the  most  catholic  form  is  the 
rational  submergence  of  our  empty  individualism  in  the  whole 
historic  life  of  the  great  brotherhood.  This  yielding  is  neither 
childlike  faith  nor  unmanly  superstition.  It  is  the  yielding 
that  should  come  from  comprehensive  insight  into  the  vital 
and  constitutive  relation  of  a  concrete  whole  to  the  single  mem- 
ber. The  historical  is  seen  to  be  the  constant  accompaniment 
and  educer  of  the  psychological  form  of  our  faith,  while  both 
rest  upon  the  metaphysical  ground  of  the  Divine  adhesion  to 
His  own  offspring  in  a  course  of  education  into  full  sonship. 

To  think  ourselves  into  the  creed,  to  form  ourselves  into 
the  manners,  to  feel  ourselves  into  the  worship  of  the  Church, 
is  our  rational  duty.  Such  rational  submission  implies  con- 
stant self-activity.  This  implies  much  doubt  and  much  self- 
restraint.  Hence  it  is  vastly  different  from  that  servile,  super- 
stitious yielding  to  dogmatic  external  authority  that  rational 
Christians  will  never  cease  to  protest  against  as  uncatholic. 

A  person  must  always  be  at  home  with  himself  in  the  con- 
tent of  his  self-consciousness  in  order  to  be  rational.  The 
creed  and  cult  of  the  Church  must  be  adopted  and  self-imposed 
through  recognition  of  their  constitutive  influence  in  his  own 
development.  But  this  development  he  knows  can  never  be 
in  isolation.  The  rational  for  him  is  the  social.  He  lives  and 
moves  and  has  his  being  in  and  through  social  relations.  The 
rational  "I  believe"  thus  rests  psychologically  and  historically 
upon  a  "we  believe."  The  rational  "we  believe"  rests  upon 
the  Christian  consciousness  of  the  community  of  which  we  are 
organic  members.  This  consciousness  rests  upon  the  primal 
and  perennial  vital  bond  of  God  with  his  offspring.  Thus  the 
ultimate  ground  of  authority  and  of  certitude  is  God's  adhe- 
sion to  man.  The  secondary,  or  mediating  ground  of  certi- 
tude for  the  individual,  is  the  Church,  which  represents  the 
adhesion  of  man  to  God,  through  consciousness  of  this  bond. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  ULTIMATE  GROUND  OF  AUTHORITY^ 

"The  bottom's  dun  drop  out,  massa,"  said  Sambo,  apolo- 
getically, when  he  broke  the  teapot.  Out  of  how  many  less 
earthen  vessels  in  which  truth  comes  to  us — laws,  codes,  ideals, 
institutions,  cults,  and  creeds — does  the  bottom  seem  to  be  drop- 
ping out  to-day.  Like  Sambo's  case,  this  is  often  due  to  our 
own  unskillful  handling.  But  it  is  also  often  due  to  a  hasty 
judgment,  that  they  even  seem  to  be  irremediably  shattered.  It 
is  certainly  needless  to  repeat  the  commonplace  remarks  as  to 
the  present  unsettled  condition  as  regards  the  till  recently  un- 
questioned authorities  in  human  affairs.  Nor  is  it  necessary 
to  more  than  refer  to  the  de  profundis  clamor  in  some  quarters 
for  the  "good  old  ways,"  and  in  others  for  "new  ways"  that 
shall  be  equally  authoritative.  Nor  is  it  necessary  to  analyze 
fully  this  craving  for  infallible  guidance,  showing  its  weak 
ethical  and  spiritual  character.  Neither  is  it  necessary  to  trace 
the  course  and  results  of  "the  age  of  criticism,"  "a  criticism," 
as  Kant  said,  "to  which  everything  is  obliged  to  submit,"  and 
to  which,  since  his  day,  everything  has,  nolens  volens,  submitted. 
Nor  is  it  necessary  to  trace  the  deflecting  tendencies  of  a  weak 
romanticism  ready  to  fall  back  upon  irrational  elements  of  life, 
or  of  a  weaker  agnosticism  which  no  longer  seeks  for  a  irov  a-rSi, 
while  the  main  stream  is  making  for  reconstruction,  re-bottom- 
ing,— for  criticised  authorities  that  are  still  authorities. 

We  believe  that  this  is  the  great  healthy  moral  and  intellect- 
ual stream  of  tendency  to-day,  despite  the  many  appearances  to 
the  contrary.  The  human  spirit  has  been  criticising  authorities 
to  find  their  real  basis.     The  work  has  been  the  work  of  an  age 

*  Reprint  of  an  article  in  The  Philosophical  Rev.,  vol.  i.  No.  3. 
19  289 


290  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

of  faith — of  daring,  soaring  and  profound  faith.  The  scepti- 
cism and  iconoclasm  have  only  been  seeming  or  partial.  The 
work  has  been  search  after  reality;  "after  bottom;"  after  "the 
"rock  all  the  way  down;"  after  the  authority  of  authorities. 
The  real  question  has  been,  what  is  the  concrete  universal  in 
which  the  visible  particulars  throb  as  members?  what  is  the 
ultimate  ground,  source,  basis,  reason  which  authenticates — 
gives  weight  and  worth  to  the  various  forms  of  authority  which 
have  been  the  educators  of  mankind  ? 

On  its  intellectual  side  this  work  has  been  a  critical  regress 
upon  the  categories  and  ideals  of  reason,  to  what  they  necessa- 
rily presuppose.  In  this  method  modern  science  and  philosophy 
are  one,  differing  only  in  the  degree  and  extent  of  their  proced- 
ure. The  ultimate  work  is  being  done  by  philosophy — the 
synoptic  and  synthetic  work  of  spirit,  building  upon  and  follow- 
ing out  the  necessary  work  of  science.  On  its  ethical  side,  it  has 
been  a  psychological  and  historical  estimate  of  past  and  existing 
cults,  codes  and  institutions  to  find  their  radical  source  and  basis. 
This  part  of  the  work  is  of  much  wider  and  nearer  interest,  but 
as  it  is  never  carried  through  without  the  aid  of  the  philosoph- 
ical work,  we  may  place  the  philosophical  first.  That  is,  the 
task  of  finding  the  right  of  might,  the  ethical  worth  of  code, 
creed,  cult  and  institution  can  only  be  performed  by  the  aid  of 
philosophy.  The  function  of  philosophy  is  simply  the  compre- 
hending of  the  old  and  the  new  as  elements  of  a  rational  process. 
It  differs  in  toto  from  the  not  yet  obsolete  rationalism  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  in  that  it  has  no  a  priori  ideal,  no  fixed  quan- 
tity and  measure  of  the  rational.  To  it,  the  real  is  the  rational, 
however  much  it  may  contradict  the  subjective  reason  of  the  in- 
dividual. It  is  a  process,  a  movement  of  real  logic  through 
historic  process  of  corporate  man. 

Again  it  seeks  the  ground,  rather  than  for  "grounds"  as  the 
old  rationalism  did.  Grounds  or  reasons  are  external  and  arti- 
ficial, and  not  inherent.  But  such  bolstering  up  with  external 
props  inevitably   leads  to  sophistry,  or  the  inventing  of  reasons 


ULTIMATE  GROUND  OF  AUTHORITY  291 

that  may  seem  to  be  valid.  This  is  the  resort  of  one  who  knows 
that  he  is  defeated ;  that  he  has  no  real  ground.  Again,  mere 
reasons  are  individualistic  "points  of  view,"  and  one  person's 
are  as  good  as  another's.  Ground,  on  the  contrary,  is  universal 
and  objective,  and  yet  immanent.  It  is  that  which  is  creative 
of  differences  and  constitutive  unity.  It  is  organic,  catholic. 
It  is  the  First  Principle  of  all  things.  It  is,  in  the  most  concrete 
word  possible,  God.  But  it  is  God  immanent,  the  living  Ground 
of  all  forms  and  phases  of  existence.  That  which  distinguishes 
philosophy  from  the  mere  rationalism  of  both  supernaturalism 
and  naturalism  is  found  in  this  conception  of  the  immanence  of 
the  Ground  in  all  phases  of  particularity.  Rationalism  never 
gets  beyond  a  Deus  ex  machina.  It  bottoms  all  forms  of  faith 
and  institution  on  that  which  is  beyond.  Its  jure  divino  creeds, 
cults,  decalogues,  politics,  are  all  based  upon  a  transcendent  me- 
chanical First  Principle.  It  never  rises  to  a  res  completa.  It 
always  deals  with  parts  without  living  organic  link. 

With  such  forms  criticism  easily  plays  havoc.  But  philoso- 
phy sees  these  same  forms  as  living  parts  of  one  self-evolving, 
self-realizing  Idea,  of  the  Absolute  Unity  which  differentiates 
or  particularizes  itself,  and  yet  is  ever  in  and  above  all  its  par- 
ticulars. Form  and  image  may  change,  but  the  ever-living 
spirit  persists  through  all  change — the  correlated  and  conserved 
force  of  the  universe.  Philosophy  thus  gives  another  jure 
divino  basis  to  all  the  ever-changing  forms  of  life,  creed,  code 
and  institution.  It  sees  that  the  actual  is  the  relatively  rational, 
not  because  any  status  quo  is  ultimate,  but  because  it  is  a  pro- 
gressive manifestation  of  the  reason  that  is  at  the  heart  of  all 
that  is. 

But  when  we  thus  dogmatically  announce  this  Ultimate 
Ground,  we  find  ourselves  asking  for  reasons  for  it.  To  at- 
tempt to  give  external  reasons,  would  be  to  fall  back  into  that 
unresolved  dualism  of  rationalism,  which  leads  ultimately  to 
agnosticism.  For  such  a  Ground,  no  sign  or  reason  can  be 
given,  except  that  which  is  self-contained  and  self-authenticat- 


292  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

ing.  How,  then,  let  us  ask,  does  God  manifest  Himself  as  the 
ground  of  all  authority  in  the  most  comprehensive  view  of 
reality,  i.  e.,  philosophy  ? 

Philosophy  is  interpretative  of  phenomenal  reality.  It  is  not 
a  priori,  but  strictly  inductive.  Without  the  woof  of  experience 
it  is  as  empty  as  experience  without  its  warp  is  blind  and  chaotic. 
The  laws  which  science  discovers  are  inductive  hypotheses.  So 
we  may  say,  at  the  risk  of  being  misunderstood,  that  the  God  of 
Philosophy  is  an  inductive  and  yet  necessary  hypothesis.  But 
how  does  it  reach  it?  A  critical  estimate  of  the  "arguments  for 
the  existence  of  God"  would  be  in  order  here,  but  out  of  pro- 
portion. Where  then  shall  we  begin?  Rather  where  shall  we 
not  begin  ?  For  every  bit  of  experience  and  every  act  of  mind 
and  will  implicitly  contain  this  First  Principle.  Let  us  begin 
with  the  simplest  form  of  our  consciousness  and  rise  into  that 
self-consciousness  which  is  the  magic  and  universally  elastic  and 
yet  adamantine  circle  which  embraces  all  reality.  Even  Pro- 
fessor Huxley  makes  the  confession  for  science  "that  all  the  phe- 
nomena of  nature  are,  in  their  ultimate  analysis,  known  to  us 
only  as  facts  of  consciousness." 

(a)  The  simplest  phase  of  consciousness  is  that  of  indefinite 
that-ness  which  becomes  qualified  into  something  distinct  and 
separate  from  the  self.  Qualified  sensations  run  into  masses. 
We  have  a  quantity  of  existence.  Here  we  are  in  the  realm  of 
common  sense,  which  sees  definite  isolated  things.  But  it  sees 
them  in  time  and  space  under  the  forms  of  quantity.  If  we 
stop  at  this  stage  we  only  have  a  lot  of  separate  "things, 
which  may  be  analyzed  into  a  chaos  of  atoms  in  an  empty  void. 
But  the  mind  which  has  already  thrown  its  unifying  power  over 
isolated  transient  sensations,  to  give  us  these  things  and  atoms 
and  the  void,  will  not  stop  here. 

(&)  After  quantifying  sensations  in  definite  aggregates,  it 
goes  on  to  qualify  and  then  to  distinguish,  relate  and  correlate 
them.  Here  the  environing  relations  become  the  chief  object 
of  interest.     Nothing  in  the  world  is  single.     Endless  series  of 


ULTIMATE  GROUND  OF  AUTHORITY  293 

relations  embrace  and  constitute  anew  what  was  at  first  separate 
and  distinct.  Environment  is  the  fate  which  submerges  isolated 
things.  These  relationing  conditions  are  named  ground,  force 
law,  substance  and  properties,  cause  and  effect,  and  finally  reci- 
procity. These  are  categories  or  thought-forms  through  which 
the  mind  knows  things  together.  They  are  the  categories  which 
science  uses  in  its  work  of  correlating  endlessly  diverse  phe- 
nomena into  system.  Each  thing  is,  only  as  it  is  determined  by 
others  as  its  cause.  It  is  the  realm  of  impersonal  law,  or  of 
pantheistic  matter,  substance  or  force. 

(c)  But  this  is  not  ultimate.  Thought  still  demands  an  Ur- 
grund  of  this  realm  of  relations.  It  demands  a  lawgiver  for 
the  law.  It  passes  from  causality  to  causa  sui.  That  is,  rela- 
tivity demands  i'^Z/^-relation.  An  effect  implies  a  self-separation 
in  the  cause — a  transference  of  energy  to  its  own  created  object. 
Reciprocity  is  the  bridge  by  which  thought  makes  this  transi- 
tion. The  cause  is  seen  to  be  as  dependent  upon  its  effect  as 
the  reverse.  It  first  becomes  a  cause  in  its  effect.  Without 
this  it  would  be  causeless.  Thus  cause  and  effect  have  essential 
kinship,  mutually  begetting  each  other.  They  form  one  total, 
dividing  itself  off  from  itself  and  yet  finding  itself  in  both. 
Each  is  an  alter  ego  begotten  by  the  other,  forming  a  totality  of 
infinite  connection  with  self,  freely  positing  all  differences  and 
yet  realizing  only  itself  in  them.  It  is  always  and  everywhere 
the  cause  only  of  itself;  that  is,  it  is  free  self-activity.  Self- 
separation  is  the  essential  presupposition  or  ground  of  causality. 

But  the  infinite  regress  of  cause  and  effect  is  futile.  The 
totality  of  conditions  must  be  self-sufficient,  self-moving,  self- 
separating  and  self-relating,  for  outside  of  the  totality  there  can 
be  nothing  causal.  Hence  changes  in  the  totality  of  conditions 
are  spontaneous  or  self-determined.  Thus  the  categories  of 
essence,  which  modern  science  uses,  issue  inductively  in  self-ac- 
tivity, self-relation,  freedom  and  personality — the  ultimate  and 
constitutive  presupposition  underlying  all  objects  of  sense  and 
all  forces,  laws  and  systems  of  science. 


294  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

But  as  self-activity  is  not  impersonal  activity,  neither  can  it 
be  solitary  activity.  Self-consciousness  is  never  an  abstract, 
unitary  activity.  It  is  always  constituted  of  trinal  relations — 
subject,  object  and  subject-object.  Causa  sui  begets  eternally 
a  second  free  self-activity  as  its  own  object.  This  again  is  cre- 
ative in  its  self-recognition.  Knowing  is  one  with  willing.  In 
knowing  himself,  he  creates  a  third  equal  one,  in  which  the  first 
also  knows  himself.  The  Christian  doctrine  of  the  Holy  Trinity 
is  the  ultimate  speculative  conception  of  the  First  Principle, 
knowing,  willing,  loving.  The  perfect  life  of  this  true  totality 
is  a  life  of  self-constituted  relationships.  It  is  timeless  and 
spaceless.  Knowing  eternally  creates  its  object  of  knowledge ; 
willing,  its  product ;  and  loving,  its  lover.  In  this  trinity  of  re- 
lationship we  may  see  love  as  the  central  constitutive  ground, 
the  absolute  form  of  self-activity.  The  world  and  man  are  its 
manifestation  in  time  and  space.  The  poet  Dante  saw  how  even 
hell  was  the  creation  of  this  "primal  love"  (Canto  III,  6). 

Common  sense  inventories  things ;  science  inventories  rela- 
tions ;  and  philosophy  explains  both  of  these  inventories  by  the 
creative  energy  of  the  totality,  or  perfect  self-consciousness. 

But  this  ascensio  mentis  ad  Deiim  is,  I  have  said,  an  induc- 
tive process,  a  critical  regress  to  the  logical  condition  of  all  ex- 
istence. It  is  thought's  description  of  heaven,  earth  and  hell, 
so  far  as  these  have  come  within  the  magic  realm  of  self-con- 
scious experience.  It  is  the  concrete  system  of  the  fossilized 
intelligence  of  man  in  all  departments  of  his  experience.  It  is 
an  inductive  discovery  and  unification  of  the  categories  through 
which  men  know  sensations,  things,  force,  laws,  self-activity. 
These  types  of  thought  came  through  empirical  experience. 
Rather  they  made  the  experience  which  reveals  them.  Each 
type  has  embalmed  the  experience  of  generations.  The  experi- 
ence of  primeval  men,  of  Oriental,  Jewish,  Greek,  Roman,  and 
Christian  man,  is  the  woof,  through  the  struggle  to  interpret 
which,  this  warp  of  thought  comes  into  human  consciousness. 


ULTIMATE  GROUND  OF  AUTHORITY  295 

It  is  the  universal  constitutive  of  all  particulars  which  thought 
has  labored  at  interpreting. 

The  various  names  which  thought  has  at  various  epochs 
given  to  this  universal  ground,  are  called  categories.  The  ulti- 
mate one  of  God,  as  concrete  or  Triune  Personality,  is  reached 
only  by  thought  thinking  Christian  experience.  Philosophy 
without  experience  is  empty,  without  progressive  experience  it 
is  dead.  It  progresses  with  experience.  Hence  it  cannot  be  the 
same  after  Christ  that  it  was  before  Christ.  To-day  it  must 
give  a  synopsis  of  the  modern  or  Christian  consciousness.  .The 
lowest  category  or  conception  of  the  universal  ground  was,  per- 
haps, spatially  the  highest, — i  e.,  the  Vedic  Sky.  This  was  an 
induction.  So,  too,  was  the  Oriental  conception  of  blank  Being 
or  Brahm,  as  well  as  the  more  modern  ones  of  matter,  substance, 
force.  Thought  tarries  dogmatically  upon  one  until  new  experi- 
ence shows  its  inadequacy.  Advance  is  made  through  new,  or 
newly  comprehended,  revelations  of  the  First  Principle  in  the 
web  of  experience.  This  implies  that  the  thinking  man  has 
lived  through  and  above  all  non-theistic,  and  all  abstract  theistic 
theories,  the  unsatisfactoriness  of  each  successive  one  forcing 
thought  to  seek  the  truth  just  beyond,  and  yet  implied  in  it,  till 
concrete  Personality  is  reached  and  is  seen  to  be  the  eternal  pre- 
supposition lying  back  of  and  giving  comparative  worth  to  each 
imperfect  one,  and  in  which  they  are  all  abrogated  and  fulfilled. 

We  may  put  the  whole  of  philosophy  in  one  sentence 
adapted  from  Augustine:  "Thou  hast  made  our  minds  for 
Thee,  O  God,  and  they  are  restless  till  they  rest  in  Thee." 
This  is  the  goal  of  catholic  philosophy,  of  corporate  reason, 
which  vindicates  all  the  transcended  steps  of  its  progress  to 
this  ultimate  ground  of  thought.  This  process  of  philosophy 
is  just  the  reverse  of  an  abstract  method.  The  God  of  thought 
is  the  most  concrete,  catholic  Real,  reached  not  by  a  process 
of  abstraction  from  particulars  to  a  blank  universal,  but  by  a 
process  of  interpretation,  an  inclusion  of  particulars  and  their 


..^  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

environment — a  totality  in  which  all  other  categories  live  and 
move  and  have  their  being. 

But  if  this  is  such  a  concrete  General,  it  must  show  itself 
capable  of  yielding  in  turn  that  from  which  it  has  been  in- 
ducted. If  this  is  the  interpretation  of  experience,  it  must 
also  be  its  interpreter.  If  this  is  the  ultimate  standpoint  of 
reason,  it  must  be  evident  how  it  bottoms  all  that  is.  It  must 
explain  all  thoughts  and  things  as  parts  of  a  great  process  of 
creation,  or  of  the  self-revelation  of  God.  It  is  not  sufficient 
to  say  that  "the  real  is  the  rational,"  if  by  the  real  we  mean 
only  a  sterile  universal.  This  would  be  of  less  worth  than  the 
deistic  Deus  ex  machtna.  This  First  Principle  must  show  it- 
self as  the  metaphysics  (fJi^Td,  in  the  midst  of)  of  nature,  man, 
and  his  institutions 

This  reverse  process  of  tracing  the  genesis  and  relative  va- 
lidity of  the  particulars  from  this  concrete  Reality  is  as  difficult 
as  it  is  necessary.  Its  relation  to  the  current  authority  of 
physical  and  ethical  law,  State,  Church,  Bible,  spirit  of  peoples, 
prophets  and  lawgivers,  is  not  immediately  evident.  How 
does  it  bottom  them,  render  them  relatively  jure  divinof  Only 
a  mere  indication  of  the  principle  and  method  of  this  work, 
and  of  the  validity  can  be  gfiven. 

The  crucial  point  is  the  transition  from  the  perfect  First 
Principle  to  an  imperfect  world,  i.  e.,  to  creation.  Here  the 
creation  ex  nihilo  and  the  emanation  theories  are  the  Scylla 
and  Charybdis.  From  neither  of  them  can  thought  pass  to  an 
adequate  First  Principle;  nor,  on  the  other  hand,  can  they 
mediate  between  It  and  creation.  They  are  unworthy  of  the 
God  of  philosophy.  To-day  there  is  an  attempt  to  revive  a 
spiritualized  form  of  the  primordial  'YX17  upon  which  the 
Demiurge  worked.  Started  anew  by  Jacob  Boehme,  this  the- 
osophic  speculation  of  a  ^wts — an  eternal  non-material  sub- 
stance in  God  as  the  source  of  creation — ^is  forcing  itself  into 
the  systems  of  Christian  theologians.^  This  is  a  commendable 
*Cf.  the  admirable  work  of  the  Rev.  Dr.  J.  Steinfort  Kedney: 
Christian  Doctrine  Harmonised. 


ULTIMATE  GROUND  OF  AUTHORITY  297 

attempt  to  avoid  the  rocks  and  the  whirlpool.  But  it  is  not, 
and  cannot  be,  ultimate  till  the  ^vo-ts  is  wholly  resolved  and 
transmuted  in  the  Divine  Glory.  This  alone  can  save  it  from 
the  maintenance  of  the  eternity  of  the  finite,  or  of  matter,  and 
make  creation  to  be  a  form  of  free  self-activity  of  the  Divine. 
Poetic,  religious  and  symbolic  forms  cannot  pass  for  the  pure, 
i.  e.,  concrete,  thought,  which  philosophy  demands. 

Now,  the  First  Principle  reached  by  philosophy  and  stated 
in  the  doctrine  of  the  Holy  Trinity  can  be  seen  as  self-suffi- 
cient, as  the  absolute  and  as  sufficient  for  creation  as  a  free 
process  of  self-activity — the  creation  going  forth  in  imperfect 
form  in  order  to  return  in  perfect  form ;  i.  e.,  a.  process  in  time 
and  space  with  the  one  sole  final  purpose  of  the  evolution  and 
education  of  rational  immortal  souls  into  a  perfect  Kingdom  of 
God.  The  world  as  such  is  not  divine,  but  a  procession  which 
includes  its  return  to  the  Divine.  That  is,  the  First  Principle 
yields  a  rational  and  teleological  basis  and  view  of  creation 
and  its  history.     The  final  cause  is  the  true  first  cause. 

Creation  in  all  its  present  forms  and  in  its  totality  is  imper- 
fect. Respice  Unern  is  philosophy's  antidote  to  doubt,  awak- 
ened by  imperfect  and  transitory  forms  of  life  and  creed. 
Reason  is  immanent  in  and  governs  the  world,  but  the  world 
as  it  is,  is  not  equal  to,  does  not  exhaust  Reason — the  Totality. 
"Anthcopo-cosmic  theism"  is  the  valid  interpretation  of  the 
creation,  still  creation  is  not  exhaustive  of  the  Divine.  It  con- 
tains all  degrees  of  tmreason  as  well  as  of  reason.  It  is  not, 
even  as  a  totality,  the  perfect,  but  a  process  towards  the  per- 
fect. Nothing  ultimate  or  infallible  can  be  looked  for  in  this 
temporal  process,  nor,  on  the  other  hand,  can  it  be  looked  at 
apart  from  its  ultimate  and  essential  destiny.  There  may  be 
three  false  verdicts  as  to  creation :  all  things  are  divine ;  noth- 
ing is  divine ;  some  things  are  divine.  The  last  has  been  the 
contention  of  abstract  supernaturalists.  They  pervert  the 
Church  doctrine  of  the  God-man,  into  an  assertion  that  the 
man  Jesus,  in  his  state  of  humiliation   (kenosis),  was  only 


298  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

veiled  Deity  and  deny  that  he  "increased  in  wisdom  and  stat- 
ure" to  his  full-orbed  Divinity  at  the  Ascension.  Much  of  the 
lately  prevalent  orthodoxy  has  run  through  the  gamut  of  ex-- 
eluded  heresies,  especially  those  of  Doketism  and  Monophys- 
itism. 

Again,  it  has  applied  its  abstract  canon  to  the  Bible  and  the 
Church,  seeking  to  take  them  out  of  the  realm  of  the  historic 
process ;  thus  going  as  wide  of  the  mark  as  those  who  find  no 
visible  historical  continuity  in  the  Church,  and  no  record  of 
authoritative  revelation  in  the  Bible. 

Such  abstract  views  are  accountable  for  much  of  current 
scepticism.  The  state  is  jure  divino.  "There  is  no  power 
(civil),  but  of  God,"  yet  Christians  have  long  since  ceased  to 
stamp  any  one  form  as  ultimate.  The  Church  is  jure  divino, 
yet  even  with  pulse-beat  of  historical  continuity  it  can  claim 
finality  in  no  one  form.  The  Church  is  never  wholly  holy,  and 
never  wholly  whole  or  catholic.  It  is  expanding  into  catholic- 
ity, growing  up  into  the  holiness  of  its  Holy  Spirit.  So,  too, 
of  prophets,  lawgivers,  the  moral  sentiment  of  the  community, 
the  fixed  laws  of  a  social  state — none  of  these  are  ever  ultimate 
or  infallible  (ecclesiastical  anathema,  or  civil  proscription  to 
the  contrary),  because  they  are  only  parts  of  a  great  process 
that  is  moving  on,  in,  and  through  temporal,  transitory  forms ; 
returning  them  in  enriched  educated  form  whence  they  sprang. 
Nothing  finite  can  be  ultimate,  nor  can  it  be  at  all  without  be- 
ing in  some  way  a  member  of  the  larger  process  towards  the 
ultimate. 

Pantheism,  which  identifies  the  immediate  actual  forms  of 
existence  with  the  divine,  is  even  more  unphilosophical  than 
the  supernatural  form  of  rationalism,  which  says  that  only 
some  things  are  divine.  This  is,  at  least,  semi-critical,  while 
pantheism  is  wholly  uncritical. 

Philosophy,  however,  differs  from  both  of  these  in  affirm- 
ing a  progressive  realization  of  rationality  in  the  world-proc- 
ess.    It  claims  to  see  enough  of  the  process  to  have  caught  its 


ULTIMATE  GROUND  OF  AUTHORITY  299 

whence  and  whither,  and  thus  to  have  an  instrument  of  criti- 
cism and  a  canon  of  valuation.  Briefly  stated  it  is  this:  the 
First  Principle  of  the  Universe  is  Personality,  or  thinking, 
loving  will,  going  forth  in  a  temporal  process  with  the  teleo- 
logical  aim  of  returning  with  a  whole  commonwealth  of  souls 
educated  into  his  own  image.  The  First  Principle  is  Reason, 
and  the  temporal  process  is  toward  Reason,  each  phase  mani- 
festing some  phase  of  rationality.  The  world  of  human  his- 
tory manifests  this  rationality  no  less,  nay  more,  than  the  world 
of  natural  history.  History  is  neither  an  immediate  work  of 
God,  nor  is  it  an  apostasy  from  God.  It  is  a  process  from 
and  to  God,  a  process  of  the  education  of  man  into  rationality, 
or  into  the  concrete  freedom  of  the  Sons  of  God  in  his  king- 
dom. On  God's  side  it  manifests  his  Providence ;  on  man's 
side,  it  is  humanity  making  itself,  or  coming  to  a  practical  con- 
sciousness of  its  rational  freedom.  Enough  of  this  has  been 
attained,  to  give  us  an  estimate  of  the  past  and  a  forecast  of 
the  future.  Man  is  what  he  now  is,  by  virtue  of  those  authori- 
tative beliefs  and  institutions,  religious  and  political,  which 
have  held  society  together  and  educated  it.  Some  of  them 
have  been  very  rudimentary  teachings  of  that  essential  intel- 
ligence that  constitutes  the  essence  and  the  destiny  of  man. 
God  "hath  determined  the  times  before  appointed,"  the  organic 
epochs  of  peoples  and  eras,  the  ganglionic  centres,  which  sum 
up  and  express  the  spirit,  the  rationality  of  various  times  and 
peoples. 

This  of  course  implies  an  historical  and  psychological  study 
of  the  origin  and  growth  of  all  human  institutions.  But  it 
also  implies  a  philosophical  or  teleological  estimate  of  all  hu- 
man history.  Our  First  Principle  interprets  it  as  the  reason 
of  humanity,  organizing  and  instituting  its  needs  and  ideals 
in  its  onward  stumbling  to  and  fro  between  its  own  true  char- 
acter and  its  passing  caricature.  History  is  thus  interpreted 
as  a  series  of  intelligent  events,  a  progressive  education  of  the 
rationality  of  man  in  his  institutions,  in  state,  art  and  religion. 


300  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

Wherever  two  or  three  are  met  together  to  consult  about  and 
devise  a  common  good ;  and  wherever  this  common  good  wid- 
ens in  extent  and  deepens  in  quahty,  there  is  seen  the  imphcit 
spirit  of  rationahty,  outering  itself. 

As  in  nature  nothing  is  without  interest,  significance, 
rationality  to  the  student  of  science,  so  in  human  history,  no 
creed,  cult,  or  institution  is  without  interest  and  significance. 
As  the  student  of  nature  traces  the  increase  of  rationality  from 
the  lowest  form  of  inorganic  mattter  up  to  its  most  organic 
form  in  man,  so  does  the  student  of  philosophy  trace  the  in- 
crease of  this  rationality  from  the  lowest  form  of  ethical  and 
religious  life,  up  to  its  most  organic,  fulfilled  form  in  the  In- 
carnation and  its  extension  in  the  life  of  the  world.  Up  to 
the  Christ,  was  the  course  of  the  world's  history  B.  C.  Up 
into  Christ,  has  been  its  course  through  all  the  centuries  A.  D. 
In  Christ  was  the  perfect  revelation  of  the  character  of  the 
First  Principle,  the  goal  and  the  starting-point  of  all  true  hu- 
man history.  Throughout  the  process  this  final  cause  domi- 
nates all  empirical  causes,  using  them  only  as  plastic  materials 
for  its  own  self-formation.  The  merely  historical  method  may 
easily  invalidate  any  dogmatic  theory  of  innate  ideas  and  con- 
science, or  any  mechanically  jure  divino  origin  of  human  in- 
stitutions, but  the  philosophical  method  easily  recovers  them 
for  the  divine  world-order. 

Man  may  be,  historically,  derived  from  the  beasts,  but  he 
is,  none  the  less,  more  than  a  beast;  more  than  the  mere  sum 
of  antecedent  empirical  conditions  of  his  genesis  out  of  beasts 
or  "out  of  the  dust  of  the  ground."  Even  science  gives  up 
the  task  of  explaining  the  higher  by  the  lower  form,  and  phil- 
osophy finds  in  self-consciousness  the  ultimate  explanation  of 
nature. 

Nor,  on  the  other  hand,  is  the  real  value  of  the  family,  the 
State  and  the  Church,  to  be  found  in  their  being  traced  back 
to  some  mysterious  ab  extra  divine  origin.  Their  value  at  any 
time  consists  in  their  adequacy  to  educate  and  express  the 


ULTIMATE  GROUND  OF  AUTHORITY  301 

highest  current  and  nascent  forms  of  human  well-being  or  con- 
crete freedom.  This  end  is  their  real  beginning.  'H  8i  0vo-is 
TcAos  ia-Ti.  Their  phase  of  rationality  is  the  measure  of  their 
worth,  and  the  measure  of  temporal  rationality  is  the  idea  of 
concrete  corporate  freedom  of  spirit  in  these  institutions. 

The  very  faculty  of  knowledge  which  accomplishes  the  re- 
sults of  scientific  history  implies,  further,  an  eternal  Self-Con- 
sciousness, eternally  self-realized,  and  yet  eternally  realizing 
itself  in  temporal  conditions.  Nothing  exists  rationally  ex- 
cept for  self-consciousness,  and  all  things  only  for  an  eternal 
Self-Consciousness,  The  theory  of  knowledge,  then,  is  ulti- 
mate for  man  in  his  study  and  his  estimation  of  all  that  is. 
The  knowledge  of  all  temporal  conditions,  can  never  itself  be 
a  part  or  product  of  these  conditions,  as  they  are  only  objects 
of  this  knowledge.  It  is  to  this  spiritual  principle,  then,  to 
which  we  must  refer  for  parentage,  all  the  institutions,  usages, 
social  codes  and  aspirations,  through  which  man  has  become 
so  far  rationalized.  The  real  at  any  time  and  place  is  the  rela- 
tively rational  for  that  time  and  place,  but  the  end  is  not  yet. 
The  Mosaic  economy  for  the  Jews  was  one  phase  of  this  ration- 
ality. That  of  the  Roman  law  was  another  phase,  even  for 
Christians.  Even  when  Nero  was  its  minister,  St.  Paul  could 
tell  Christians,  "There  is  no  power  but  of  God,"  and  "he  is-' 
the  minister  of  God  to  thee  for  good." 

But  this  is  far  from  identifying  the  actual  at  any  time  with 
the  rational,  the  good.  The  concrete  principle  forbids  the 
glorification  of  any  status  quo,  and  compels  historical  perspec- 
tive. It  sees  only  a  series  of  increasingly  adequate  manifesta- 
tions and  vehicles  of  the  true  spirit  of  man.  The  highest  form 
to-day  is  given  for  us  in  all  the  distinctively  Christian  institu- 
tions. Other  objective  forms  of  rationality  are  not  now  the 
tf)va-Ls  of  man.  Other  spirit  of  rationality  can  never  be  for 
man,  however  much  its  outward  forms  may  change,  as  man  is 
educated  "unto  the  measure  of  the  stature  of  the  fullness  of 
the  Christ" — the  eternal  Reason,  the  goal  and  the  starting- 


302  THE  FREEDOM  OF  AUTHORITY 

point  of  man's  true  history.  This  is  the  bed-rock,  the  bottom, 
the  immanent  formative  and  life-sustaining  power  in  all  the 
current  phases  of  educative  authority.  Illustrative  applica- 
tion of  this  ultimate  bottom  of  all  authority,  may  be  made  to 
current  forms  of  social,  civil  and  religious  authorities,  in  and 
through  which  man  attains  and  exercises  true  freedom. 


APPENDIX 

Note  i^ 

The  other  school  of  interpretation,  which  we  have  mentioned,  is  re- 
sponsible for  this  suspicion,  which  has  cost  us  an  appalling  price,  among 
other  things  the  good-will  of  Protestantism  and  the  opportunity  to  gain  a 
friendly  hearing  for  the  wise  and  temperate  proposals  of  the  House  of 
Bishops.  In  truth  that  party  does  not  desire  either  of  these.  It  is  self- 
labeled  Catholic.  It  holds  the  Episcopate  in  an  unhistorical  and  sacer- 
dotal spirit.  It  obscures  it  by  enveloping  it  with  a  certain  theory  of  the 
apostolical  succession,  making  it  a  necessary  channel  for  the  grace  of 
valid  ministry  and  sacraments.'^  Churchmen  of  that  party  hold  it  in  an 
unhistorical  spirit,  because  they  hold  it  in  a  form  "locally  adapted"  not 
to  the  present  living  Christianity  of  this  country,  but  to  that  of  the 
middle  ages,  as  the  costume  of  a  barbarian  child  might  be  "locally 
adapted"  to  the  needs  of  a  full-grown  man  of  this  generation  and  cul- 
ture. It  looks  upon  Protestant  Christianity  as  a  failure  or  a  chaos,  as 
Carlyle's  minnow  in  his  little  creek  might  upon  the  ocean-tides  and 
periodic  currents,  and  has  but  one  short  and  easy  recipe  for  its  salvation 
— "Hear  the  Church."  Too  often  this  means  only  the  Church  in  their 
own  person,  or  parish,  or  party. 

It  denies  that  the  protesting,  differentiating  dialectic  of  the  life  of  a 
Christian  commonwealth  is  as  much  the  work  of  the  Holy  Spirit  as  the 
conservative  and  synthetic  element.  It  takes  a  part  for  the  whole.  It 
stands  only  for  the  arrested  growth  of  the  organization  at  an  earlier 
period.    But  history  is  not  a  mere  dead  past.    It  is  a  living  present  in 

*  Extract  from  appendix  to  author's  Studies  in  Hegel's  Philosophy  of  Religion,  p.  325- 
'Their  theory  or  doctrine  of  apostolical  succession  is  thus  stated  by  Froude: 
■'  1.  The  participation  of  the  body  and  blood  of  Christ  is  essential  to  the  maintenance  of 
Christian  life  and  hope  in  each  individual.  2.  It  is  conveyed  to  individual  Christians  only 
by  the  hands  of  the  successors  of  the  apostles  and  their  delegates.  The  successors  of 
the  apostles  are  those  who  are  descended  in  a  direct  line  from  them  by  the  imposition 
of  hands;  and  the  delegates  of  these  are  the  respective  presbyters  whom  each  has 
commissioned"  (quoted  by  Rev.  John.  J.  McElhinney,  The  doctrine  of  the  Church, 
p.  3S9).  Again  (from  Tract  No.  LII);  "  In  the  judgment  of  the  Church,  the  Eucharist, 
administered  without  apostolical  commission,  may,  to  pious  minds,  be  a  very  edifying 
ceremony  ;  but  it  is  not  that  blessed  thing  which  our  Saviour  graciously  meant  it  to  be : 
it  is  not  '  verily  and  indeed  taking  and  receiving '  the  body  and  blood  of  him,  our 
Incarnate  Lord  "  {ibid.). 

303 


304  APPENDIX 

organic  connection  with  a  living  past,  that  only  becomes  dead  when 
locally  unadopted.  The  same  fact  is  held  by  both  schools.  But  it  is  in- 
terpreted by  the  two  with  both  a  different  historical  and  philosophical 
spirit.  The  one  says  the  old  must  be  transmuted  into  the  new ;  the  other 
says  that  the  new  is  bad  and  the  old  is  good.  The  latter  sacrifices  the 
Kingdom  of  God  to  the  Church  as  an  end.  To  be  a  good  churchman  is 
more  than  to  be  a  good  Christian.  They  give  it  a  sanctity  above  and 
apart  from  its  intrinsic  excellence  as  a  means  to  the  welfare  of  the  whole 
estate  of  Christ's  Church  militant.  So  as  to  the  value  placed  upon 
Church  authority  and  holy  orders.  It  calls  "orders"  a  sacrament,  though 
our  article  (XXV)  denies  it  this  grace.  Without  bishops  no  priest, 
without  priest  no  sacraments,  and  so  no  salvation  except  in  some  way 
of  irregular,  unauthorized,  uncovenanted  Divine  mercy.  It  travesties 
presbyter  into  priest,  and  arrogates  to  itself  the  grandest  title  in  God's 
universe  "Catholic."  Fortunately  for  formal  truth,  it  limits  this  by  call- 
ing itself  the  Catholic  party.  It  declines  discussion,  and  deals  in  em- 
phatic assertion.  Its  devout  thanks  to  the  Lord  for  the  unity  of  the 
Church  are  drowned  by  its  constant  litany  and  commination  service  for 
the  one  mortal  sin  of  schism  from  a  dead  past.  A  few  local  directions 
given  to  local  churches  in  the  apostolical  age  are  magnified  into  a  whole 
book  of  Leviticus.  St.  Paul's  "cloak"  is  translated  "Eucharistic  vest- 
ment," and  his  "parchments"  "liturgy."  Apist  is  developing  into  papist. 
Miraculous  powers,  uninterrupted  descent,  infallible  authority,  fixed  dog- 
mas, and  ready  anathemas — all  are  of  Rome,  Romish. 

As  Archbishop  Whately  said :  "It  is  curious  to  observe  how  common 
it  is  for  any  sect  or  party  to  assume  a  title  indicative  of  the  very  excel- 
lence in  which  they  are  especially  deficient,  or  strongly  condemnatory 
of  the  very  errors  with  which  they  are  especially  chargeable.  The  phrase 
'catholic'  is  most  commonly  in  the  mouths  of  those  who  are  the  most 
limited  and  exclusive  in  their  views,  and  who  seek  to  shut  out  the  larg- 
est number  of  Christian  communities  from  the  gospel  covenant. 
'Schism,'  again,  is  by  none  more  loudly  reprobated  than  by  those  who 
are  not  only  the  immediate  authors  of  schism,  but  the  advocates  of  prin- 
ciples tending  to  generate  and  perpetuate  schisms  without  end.  And 
'Church  principles' — 'High  Church  principles' — are  the  favorite  terms  of 
those  who  go  the  farthest  in  subverting  all  these"  (The  Kingdom  of 
Christ  Delineated,  p.  125).  There  can  be  no  more  wicked  form  ©f 
schism  than  that  which  thus  binds  the  oracles  of  God  where  he  has  not 
Himself  bound  them.  And  this  theory  is  called  that  of  organic  unity, 
while  it  unfrocks  the  whole  body  of  non-Episcopally  ordained  ministers, 
denying  the  validity  of  the  orders  and  sacraments  of  those  who  have 
been  foremost,  under  God's  uncovenanted  mercy,  in  spreading  the  prin- 


APPENDIX  305 

ciples  and  doctrines  and  spirit  of  Christ  among  men.  Better  call  it  tho 
inorganic  unity  of  petrifaction.  Its  spirit  is  really  Donatistic,  not 
churchly.  Its  Church  history  can  all  be  put  in  one  small  volume,  a  port- 
able but  pitiable  commentary  on  the  Saviour's  promise  and  power  of 
fulfillment.  "History  is  heresy,"  said  a  doctor  of  the  Roman  com- 
munion, which  puts  herself  above  history,  or  only  takes  out  her  own  from 
the  great  current.  To  it  Christ  has  been  defeated  by  anti-Christ.  Cer- 
tain it  is  that,  the  great  mass  of  American  Christians  will  respond  to 
either  Roman  or  Anglo-Roman  assertion  that  "history  is  heresy"  in  the 
words  of  St.  Paul :  "After  the  way  they  call  heresy,  so  worship  I  the 
God  of  my  fathers"  (Acts  xxiv,  14).  The  Romish  interpretation  given 
to  the  Church  by  this  party  can  never  be  accepted  by  American  Chris- 
tianity. For  it  ignores  all  the  fine  spiritual  life  and  thought  of  the 
Protestant  centuries,  the  outcome  of  the  deepest  mental  and  spiritual 
struggles  and  life  of  any  age  of  Christendom.  It  is  reactionary,  not 
progressive — hierarchical,  not  democratic — ^priestly  rather  than  propheti- 
cal and  ethical.  It  aims  at  once  more  subjecting  the  consciences  of  the 
laity  to  the  direction  of  priests  through  the  confessional,  practically  mak- 
ing it  obligatory  for  confirmation  and  the  Holy  Communion.  It  imitates 
the  Roman  costume  and  cult  and  dialect,  often  out-Romaning  the  Ro- 
mans. It  is  a  party,  rather  than  a  school  of  thought,  bent  upon  propa- 
gating and  proselytizing.  It  is  instant  in  season  and  out  of  season  in 
circulating  its  little  reasons  for  being  a  churchman  of  its  type.  It  has  its 
index  librorum  prohibiiorum.  With  impudent  assumption  it  puts  the 
Church's  imprimatur  upon  its  pseudo-Catholic  tracts,  manuals,  and  books 
of  devotion  and  of  doctrine.  Its  peculiar  horror  is  sectarianism,  and  its 
chief  mortal  sin  is  schism.  Protestantism  is  "the  man  of  sin."  Shame 
alone  forbids  me  giving  the  name  of  the  bishop  who  could  write  thus: 
"The  question  with  tfieT'rotestant  is  not  so  much  what  you  affirm,  but  what 
do  you  deny;  and  the  more  he  denies  and  the  less  he  affirms,  the  better 
Protestant  is  he.  He  is  not  expected  to  give  much  heed  to  the  Lord's 
Prayer  or  the  Ten  Commandments,  and  for  the  most  part  he  does  not 
disappoint  the  expectation,"  It  is  but  a  sorry  eirenicon  that  this  party 
can  attempt  with  the  great  rich  current  of  American  Christianity.  If  the 
oflfer  of  the  historic  Episcopate  in  their  interpretation  of  its  significance 
could  be  accepted,  it  would  only  lead  to  an  American  Church  that  would 
need  to  repent  in  sackcloth  and  ashes  for  its  spiritual  apostasy  from 
Christ,  and  pray  to  be  speedily  baptized  with  the  fiery  baptism  of  a 
Reformation. 

Certainly  a  polemical  protest  against  the  interpretation  of  the  historic 
Episcopate  by  this  very  polemical  party,  is  essential  to  our  holding  it 
20 


3o6  APPENDIX 

forth  as  an  eirenicon  to  our  brethren  of  the  great  Christian  communions 
of  America.  This  protest  is  necessary,  because  this  party,  though  small, 
is  very  noisily  aggressive.  It  is  the  polemical  party  in  the  Church, 
loudly  and  constantly  protestant  against  the  Protestantism  of  its  own 
communion.  It  thus  greatly  misrepresents  us  to  others.  For,  measured 
by  the  number  and  dogmatism  of  its  words,  it  might  well  be  considered 
as  representing  the  dominant  view  of  our  Church.  In  the  interest  of  in- 
ternal peace,  the  greatest  possible  latitude  has  been  allowed  to  this  party. 
It  has  been  protected  in  its  youth,  but,  as  it  gains  strength,  it  turns  again 
only  to  rend  those  who  have  protected  it,  and  seeks  to  make  its  liberty 
the  tyranny  of  the  whole  Church.  ...  In  its  beginning,  this  party  sprang 
from  a  real  revival  of  religion.  It  had  then,  and  has  always  had,  its 
devout  scholars,  saintly  men,  and  genuine  philanthropists.  It  has  done 
much  for  our  own  Church  in  infusing  a  reverent  devotion  into 
worship,  and  has  done  a  noble  work  of  Christian  love  among  the  poor. 
But  this  does  not  commend  the  system.  The  same  lofty  praise  due  to 
many  of  them  is  also  justly  accorded  to  very  many  of  the  Jesuits.  For  its 
many  holy  men  and  their  self-sacrificing  labors  of  love,  I  have  all  honor 
and  thankfulness.  For  much  that  they  have  done  to  adorn  "the  Bride  of 
Christ,"  for  the  "gold,  silver,  and  precious  stones"  they  have  built  upon 
the  one  foundation,  I  have  due  appreciation.  But  for  the  theory,  and  for 
many  of  its  practical  as  well  as  logical  results — for  its  "wood,  hay,  and 
stubble" — I  have  only  sorrow  and  shame. 

This  retrogressive  party  is  not  a  large  one.  While  many  of  its  ex- 
ponents are  too  devout  and  holy  to  put  it  forth  in  the  obnoxious  form 
described,  it  is  yet  as  a  party  extremely  pronounced  and  polemical  in  its 
assertion  of  the  sacerdotal  character  of  the  ministry.  It  is  a  clerical 
party.  It  embraces  a  few  laymen.  Neither  can  it  be  said  that  the  other 
school  of  thought  is  dominant  in  the  Church,  just  in  the  form  described. 
The  conservative  High  Churchmen,  perhaps,  form  the  bulk  of  our  com- 
munion. These  hold  to  episcopacy  as  essential  to  the  very  being  of  a 
visible  Church,  without  giving  it  the  obnoxious  sacerdotal  interpretation. 
For  the  most  part,  they  also  hold  it  in  the  true  historical  spirit  described. 

The  attempt  by  the  sacerdotal  party  to  capture  this  large  element 
wholesale  bade  fair  of  success  but  recently.  It  has  failed  and  will  fail. 
For  that  school  stands  firmly  loyal  to  the  historical  Reformation  of  the 
Church  of  England.  Its  wider  perspective,  its  larger  practical  wisdom 
and  sympathy  with  the  work  of  the  Spirit  in  the  modern  world,  will  pre- 
vent its  members  accepting  mediaeval  sacerdotalism  as  essentially  con- 
nected with  their  view  of  the  Episcopate.  It  is  freedom  from  this  that 
makes  them  at  one  with  the  Evangelical  and  Broad  Church  schools  in 
their  desire  "to  enter  into  friendly  conference  with  all  or  any  Christian 


APPENDIX 


307 


bodies  seeking  the  organic  unity  of  the  Church."  It  is  the  sacerdotal 
system  connected  with  the  mediaeval  theory  of  the  Episcopate  as  the 
necessary  channel  of  divine  grace,  instead  of  the  primitive  and  reforma- 
tion view  of  it  as  the  best  mode  of  government,  that  forms  the  line  of 
radical  demarkation  between  parties  in  our  Church.  Between  these  two 
there  is  as  yet  no  tenable  middle  ground.  The  former  is  not,  and  the 
latter  is.  Primitive,  Reformed,  Anglican  and  American, 

This  question  of  our  interpretation  of  the  "historic  Episcopate"  is  a 
most  practical  one.  It  is  the  question  of  the  relation  of  the  Protestant 
Episcopal  Church  to  the  other  Protestant  Churches  of  America.  The 
historic  fact  may  be  interpreted  into  an  unhistorical  and  unchristian 
theory ;  or  it  may  be  so  interpreted  as  to  be  the  form  for  unifying  in  ex- 
ternal organization  the  large  spiritual  unity  already  existing  between  the 
diflferent  churches  of  this  country.  It  may  be  interpreted  so  as  to  lead 
us  to  stretch  out  our  hands  to  the  wnholy  Orthodox  Greek  Church,  that 
scarcely  awakes  sufficiently  from  its  torpid  slumber  to  recognize  our 
infantile  presence;  or  to  beckon  to  Rome — to  the  great,  wily,  compre- 
hensive, absolute  master  of  this  theory — as  Mohammed  beckoned  to  the 
mountain.  Or  it  may  be  interpreted  so  broadly,  reasonably,  practically, 
and  philosophically  in  the  Spirit  of  Christ  and  of  the  historic  method, 
that  we  shall  not  stretch  out  our  hands  in  vain  to  our  sister  churches  of 
America.  No  age  and  no  form  of  ecclesiastical  institution  are  perfect  or 
lasting,  and  yet  the  Holy  Spirit  is  the  diversifying  and  unifying  principle 
of  them  all.  Holding  fast  in  the  spirit  of  the  historico-philosophical  and 
practical  method,  all  that  is  true  in  the  past  in  vital  connection  with  all 
that  is  good  in  the  present,  we  need  no  arrogant  pretension  of  absorbing 
all  into  an  Anglican  Church  with  its  fully  developed  polity  and  liturgical 
worship,  in  order  to  be  the  leader  of  broken  American  Christendom  into 
the  higher  catholicity  of  the  American  Church  of  the  future. 

The  vision  of  and  the  sure  confidence  in  the  One  Holy  Catholic 
Church  as  realized,  or  as  being  realized,  through  historic  process  under 
Divine  guidance,  has  come  to  all  devout  disciples  of  the  One  Lord.  But, 
under  this  guidance,  the  practical  step  to  be  taken  by  us  to-day  is  toward 
an  autonomous  national  Church.  It  is  the  ecclesiastical  problem  of  the 
country.    It  is  a  longing  of  every  Christian  heart. 

Note  2  * 

In  insisting  upon  grace  and  rhythm  and  harmony  as  characteristic  of 
the  well  trained  mind  Plato  says  : 

"This  being  the  case  ought  we  to  compel  only  our  poets  to  impress  on 
their  productions  the  likeness  of  a  good  moral  character?  Or  ought  we 
not  to  extend  our  superintendence  to  the  professors  of  every  other  craft, 


308  APPENDIX 

and  forbid  them  to  impress  those  signs  of  an  evil  nature,  of  dissoluteness, 
of  meanness  and  of  ungracefulness,  either  on  the  likenesses  of  living 
creatures  or  on  buildings,  or  on  any  other  work  of  their  hands  ?  Should 
we  not  interdict  all  who  cannot  do  otherwise  from  working  in  our  city, 
so  that  our  guardians  may  not  be  reared  amongst  images  of  vice,  as  upon 
unwholesome  pastures,  culling  much  every  day,  little  by  little  from  many 
places,  until  they  insensibly  get  a  large  mass  of  evil  in  their  inmost  souls? 
Ought  we  not  then,  rather,  seek  out  artists  of  another  stamp,  who  by  the 
power  of  their  genius  can  trace  out  the  nature  of  the  beautiful  and  the 
graceful,  that  our  young  men,  dwelling  as  it  were  in  a  healthful  region, 
may  drink  in  good  from  all  their  surroundings,  whence  any  emanation 
from  noble  works  may  strike  upon  their  eye  or  ear,  like  a  gale  wafting 
health  from  salubrious  lands,  and  thus  win  them,  imperceptibly,  from 
their  earliest  childhood  into  resemblance,  love  and  harmony  with  the 
true  beauty  of  reason."^ 

Again  noting  the  care  of  dyers  to  get  the  true  sea-purple  and  make  it 
indelible,  he  says :  "You  may  see  from  this  illustration  what  we  mean 
by  giving  our  guardians  the  best  education  in  music  and  gymnastic. 
Imagine  that  we  were  only  contriving  how  they  might  best  be  influenced 
to  take  as  it  were  the  color  of  the  laws,  in  order  that  their  opinion  on  all 
subjects  might  be  indelible,  owing  to  their  congenial  nature  and  appro- 
priate education,  and  that  their  color  might  not  be  washed  out  by  such 
terribly  efficacious  detergents  as  pleasure  and  pain  and  fear  and  desire, 
which  are  more  potent  to  bleach,  than  any  nitre  or  lye  or  any  other 
solvent  in  the  world."* 

Note  3 

"I  believe,"  says  Comte,  "that  I  have  discovered  the  law  of  develop- 
ment  exhibited  by  the   human   intelligence  in   its   diverse   spheres   of 

activity The  law  is  this :  that  each  of  our  main  conceptions,  each 

branch  of  knowledge,  passes  in  succession  through  three  distinct  stages — 
the  theological  or  imaginative  stage,  the  metaphysical  or  abstract,  and  the 

scientific  or  positive In  the  theological  stage,  the  human  mind 

seeks  to  discover  the  inner  nature  of  things,  the  first  and  final  cause  of 
all  the  effects  which  strike  the  senses:  in  short  it  aims  at  absolute 
knowledge,  and  regards  phenomena  as  due  to  the  direct  and  continuous 
activity  of  supernatural  beings,  more  or  less  numerous,  whose  arbitrary 
intervention  explains  all  the  apparent  anomalies  of  the  Universe. 

"In  the  metaphysical  stage,  which  is  at  bottom  merely  a  modification 
of  the  theological,  for  supernatural  agents  there  are  substituted  abstract 

»  The  Republic.  Bk.  Ill,  401.  B. 
*Ibid..  Bk.  IV.  429-430. 


APPENDIX  309 

forces,  entities  or  personified  abstractions,  supposed  to  be  inherent  in  dif- 
ferent classes  of  things,  and  to  be  capable  of  producing  by  themselves,  all 
the  phenomena  we  observe.  The  mode  of  explanation  at  this  stage, 
therefore,  consists  in  assigning  for  each  class  a  correspondent  entity. 

"Lastly  in  the  positive  stage,  the  human  mind,  recognizing  the  impos- 
sibility of  gaining  absolute  conceptions  of  things,  gives  up  the  search 
after  the  origin  and  destiny  of  the  Universe  and  the  inner  causes  of 
phenomena,  and  limits  itself  to  the  task  of  finding  out,  by  means  of  expe- 
rience, combined  with  reflection  and  observation,  the  laws  of  phenomena, 
i.  e.,  their  invariable  relations  of  similarity  and  succession.  The  explana- 
tion of  facts,  reduced  to  its  simplest  terms,  is  now  regarded  as  simply  the 
connection  which  subsists  between  diverse  particular  phenomena  and 
certain  general  facts,  the  number  of  which  is  continually  reduced  with  the 
progress  of  science. 

"The  theological  reaches  its  greatest  perfection  when  it  substitutes 
the  providential  action  of  a  single  being  for  the  numerous  independent 
divinities  imagined  to  be  at  work  in  primitive  times.  Similarly,  the  high- 
est point  reached  by  the  metaphysical  system  consists  in  conceiving, 
instead  of  a  number  of  particular  entities,  a  single  great  entity,  called 
Nature,  which  is  viewed  as  the  sole  source  of  all  phenomena.  So  also  the 
perfection  of  the  positive  system,  a  perfection  towards  which  it  con- 
tinually tends,  but  which  it  is  highly  probable  it  will  never  quite  reach, 
would  consist  in  being  able  to  represent  all  observed  phenomena,  as  par- 
ticular instances  of  a  single  general  fact,  such  as  the  fact  of  gravitation. 

"We  thus  see  that  the  essential  character  of  positive  philosophy  is  to 

regard  all  phenomena  as  subject  to  invariable  laws What  is  called 

causes — whether  these  are  first  or  final  causes — are  absolutely  inacces- 
sible and  the  search  for  them  a  vain  one What  attraction  and 

weight  are  in  themselves,  we  cannot  possibly  tell." 

Note  4 

"A  Candid  Examination  of  Theism"  by  Physicus.  (Geo.  Romanes, 
1878),  written  when  the  author's  thought  was  dominated  by  the  cate- 
gories of  mechanical  physics. 

The  legend  prefixed  is :  "Cans't  thou  by  searching  find  out  God  ?" 
The  answer,  obtained  by  an  examination  of  the  arguments  for  the 
existence  of  God  from  the  standpoint  of  physical  science  is,  No.  The 
last  paragraph  of  his  examination  of  their  proofs  should  I  think  be  read 
by  everyone  in  this  day  of  the  dominance — half  understood  by  most  of 
those  who  accept  it — of  the  merely  scientific  view  of  the  universe. 

Regarding  the  negative  conclusion  reached,  Prof.  Romanes  says: 

"It  is  therefore  with  the  utmost  sorrow  that  I  find  myself  compelled 


3IO  APPENDIX 

to  accept  the  conclusions  here  worked  out."  Then  premising  the  possibly 
disastrous  tendency  of  his  work,  he  adds :  "So  far  as  I  am  individually 
concerned  ....  it  becomes  my  duty  to  stifle  all  belief  of  the  kind  which 
I  conceive  to  be  the  noblest  and  to  discipline  my  intellect  with  regard  to 
this  matter  into  an  attitude  of  purest  scepticism.  And  forasmuch  as  I  am 
far  from  being  able  to  agree  with  those  who  aflSrm  that  the  twilight  doc» 
trine  of  he  "new  faith"  is  a  desirable  substitute  for  the  waning  splendor  of 
"the  old,"  I  am  not  ashamed  to  confess  that  with  this  virtual  negation  of 
God,  the  Universe  to  me  has  lost  its  soul  of  loveliness ;  and  although  from 
henceforth  the  precept  to  "work  while  it  is  day"  will  doubtless  but  gain 
an  intensified  force  from  the  terribly  intensified  meaning  of  the  words 
"the  night  cometh  when  no  man  can  work,"  yet  when  at  times  I  think, 
as  think  at  times  I  must,  of  the  appalling  contrast  between  the  hallowed 
glory  of  that  creed  which  once  was  mine  and  the  lonely  mystery  of  ex- 
istence as  now  I  find  it — at  such  times  I  shall  ever  feel  it  impossible  to 
avoid  the  sharpest  pang  of  which  my  nature  is  susceptible  For  whether 
it  be  due  to  my  intelligence  not  being  sufficiently  advanced  to  meet  the  re- 
quirements of  the  age,  or  whether  it  be  due  to  the  memory  of  those  hal- 
lowed associations  which  to  me,  at  least,  were  the  sweetest  that  life  has 
given,  I  cannot  but  feel  that  for  me  and  for  others  who  think  as  I  do, 
there  is  a  dreadful  truth  in  those  words  of  Hamilton — Philosophy  having 
become  a  mediation,  not  merely  of  death,  but  of  annihilation,  the  precept 
know  thyself  has  become  transformed  into  the  terrific  oracle  of  Oedipus — 
"Mayest  thou  ne'er  know  the  truth  of  what  thou  art." 

Reference  should,  however,  be  made  to  a  posthumous  volume  of 
Romanes,^  in  which  Romanes  gives  the  processes  of  his  ripening  expe- 
rience that  led  him  back  to  the  Christian  faith.  One  of  the  chapters  is 
entitled,  "A  Candid  Examination  of  Religion,"  by  Metaphysicus,  as  his 
earlier  volume  had  been  "A  Candid  Examination  of  Theism,"  by 
Physicus.  He  is  still  Physicus — a  devoted  student  of  physical  science, 
accepting  fully  the  mechanical  theory  and  its  results,  yet  he  sees  the  limi- 
tations of  the  merely  scientific  world  view  forcing  him  from  physics  to 
metaphysics  for  a  satisfactory  world  view.  The  volume  is  the  candid 
personal  confession  of  the  way  leading  Physicus  from  the  despair  with 
which  closed  his  first  volume. 

Bishop  Gore  at  the  close  of  the  volume  says : 

"Georges  Romanes  came  to  recognize,  as  in  these  written  notes  so  also 
in  conversation,  that  it  was  'reasonable  to  be  a  Christian  believer'  even 
before  the  activity  or  habit  of  faith  had  been  recovered.  His  life  was  cut 
short  very  soon  after  this  point  was  reached ;  but  it  will  surprise  no  one 
to  learn  that  the  writer  of  these  'Thoughts'  returned,  before  his  death, 

*  Thounhis  on  Relieion.    Edited  by  the  Rt.  Rev.  Charles  Gore. 


APPENDIX  311 

to  that  full,  deliberate  communion  with  the  Church  of  Jesus  Christ,  which 
he  had  for  so  many  years  been  conscientiously  compelled  to  forego.  In 
his  case,  'the  pure  in  heart'  was,  after  a  long  period  of  darkness  allowed, 
in  a  measure  before  his  death,  to  'see  God.'  " 

Fecisti  nos  ad  te,  Domine;  et  inquietum  est  cor  nostrum  donee 
requiescat  in  te. 

Note  5 

Pragmatism  has  lately  been  proclaimed  as  a  new  method  in 
Philosophy.  It  is  a  revolt  against  the  intellectual  interpretation  of  expe- 
rience given  by  the  Catholic  philosophy  of  the  ages  in  favor  of  a  practical 
interpretation.  It  seems  to  be  but  an  extension  of  the  worth-judgments 
(Werturteile)  of  the  Ritschlians  to  the  field  of  all  knowledge.  Or 
we  might  put  it  that  it  is  the  bodily  subsumption  of  the  whole  principles 
of  knowing  or  existential  judgments  of  Kant's  First  Critique,  under  the 
heuristic  principles  of  his  Third  Critique  and  of  his  moral  judgment  of 
the  Second  Critique.  It  only  carries  the  agnosticism  of  those  who  deny 
the  possibility  of  knowledge  of  non-sensuous  experience  to  the  full  swing 
of  the  circle  and  denies  it  in  toto.  Or  rather,  as  it  claims  to  be  a  certain 
sort  of  knowledge ;  it  maintains  that  all  our  knowledge  consists  of  prac- 
tical teleological  judgments,  whether  in  mathematics  and  physics  or  iij, 
morality  and  religion.  Indeed  it  seems  that  the  same  moral  dread  of 
positive  science,  as  subversive  of  the  individual  and  his  spiritual  posses- 
sions, inspires  the  pragmatists  that  lead  to  Ritschl's  use  of  Werturteile. 
This  is  notably  so  in  the  case  of  Professor  Howison.^  It  is  equally  so  in 
Professor  James'  volume.*  In  Professor  F.  C.  S.  Schiller's  volume,* 
the  animus,  seems  to  be  a  revolt  against  the  regnant  Idealism  developed 
from  the  Kantian  standpoint.  In  the  volume  of  essays,  by  eight  Oxford 
men,*  the  religious  and  moral  interests  seem  to  be  at  the  bottom  of  their 
contention  against  the  intellectualism  of  both  science  and  philosophy.  In 
the  volume  of  Professor  Dewey"*  pragmatism  is  used  rather  as  a  method 
of  studying  the  genetic  process  of  intellectual  judgments,  than  as  wholly 
new  method  in  Philosophy.  What  now  is  the  fundamental  principle  of 
this  extravagantly  vaunted  new  theory  that  is  styled  pragmatism?  As 
one  reads  most  of  these  volumes,  he  becomes  dazed  and  bewildered  and 
ends  with  very  vague  ideas  of  what  the  thing  really  means.  Two  things 
however  are  clear.  First  these  pragmatists  give  us  to  understand  that 
truth  as  an  objective  system — truth,  the  search  for  which  has  been  the 

'  TJie  Limits  of  Evolution  and  other  Essays,  igoi. 

*  The  Will  to  Believe  and  Other  Essays. 

*  Humanism,  Philosophical  Essays,  rgoa. 

*  Personal  Idealism. 

*  Studies  in  Logical  Theory,  by  John  Dewey  and  othert. 


312  APPENDIX 

object  of  all  science  and  philosopsy,  is  a  mere  cob-web  of  the  intellect. 
Second,  that  all  our  judgments  of  reality  are  worth  or  value-judgments. 
What  is  called  truth  and  reality  consist  in  bare  practical  effects.  In 
science,  for  instance,  if  it  serves  our  practical  purposes  better  to  use  the 
Ptolomaic  instead  of  the  Copernican  theory  in  astronomy  then  it  is  the 
true  and  real  for  us.  In  morals,  if  honesty  is  the  best  policy,  then  hon- 
esty is  the  truth.  In  philosophy,  if  we  can  get  more  out  of  our  moral 
and  religious  life  by  believing  in  polytheism  instead  of  monotheism,  then 
polytheism  is  the  truth,  which  is  practically  the  view  of  Professor  How- 
ison  and  Professor  James  and  Professor  Schiller.  Any  affirmed  truth 
that  does  not  subserve  practice  is  no  truth.  The  modicum  of  truth  in  this 
last  statement  is  however  perverted,  by  an  illogical  conversion  of  prem- 
ises, into  the  statement  which  is  the  main  working  view  of  pragmatism, 
that  only  what  is  practical  is  true.  The  corollary  follows,  let  us  test  all 
affirmed  truths  by  their  cash  value.  What  is  the  practical  cash  value  to 
us  of  any  supposed  truth  in  science  as  well  as  in  philosophy  and  religion  ? 
Mental  arithmetic  becomes  at  best  a  moral  arithmetic.  The  cut  bono 
scales  are  to  give  us  the  validity  of  judgments  in  all  spheres.  Reason- 
ableness or  truth  is  not  a  good  in  itself.  It  is  an  abstraction.  The  only 
truth  is  goodness,  i.  e.,  that  which  is  good  for  some  practical  purpose. 
There  is  no  truth,  no  absolute  system  of  truth  independent  of  the  needs  of 
men.  Love  of  such  supposed  truth,  which  has  always  been  the  inspira- 
tion of  thinkers,  is  rudely  taken  from  us  as  the  worship  of  a  false  God. 
Such  truth  is  useless,  and  the  useless  is  the  false.  There  is  no  determi- 
nate nature  of  reality,  either  physical,  for  science  or  metaphysical,  for 
philosophy.  True  truth  is  the  judgment  that  works,  accomplishes  some- 
thing beneficent  for  man.  A  mathematician  who  discovered  a  new 
formula  and  said  that  while  it  was  absolutely  demonstrable,  the  best 
thing  about  it  was  that  it  could  never  by  any  possibility  be  of  any  use  to 
anybody.  The  pragmatist  would  say  that  he  and  all  intellectualists  were 
excrescences  on  real  humanity.  Logic,  too,  of  course,  is  dismissed  in 
favor  of  working  theories  that  produce  what  meets  men's  needs. 

We  can  say  that  what  is  true  in  pragmatism  is  not  new,  and  what  is 
new  in  it — the  attempt  to  substitute  value-judgments  in  all  cognition  for 
judgments  of  truth  and  reality — is  not  true. 

Note  6 

This  letter  of  the  Archbishop  of  Paris,  founded  upon  a  communication 
from  the  Pope,  that  the  supreme  tribunal  of  the  holy  office  had  formally 
condemned  the  works  of  the  Abbe  Loisy,  thus  concludes : 

" Considering,  first,  that  it  has  been  published  without  the  im- 
primatur demanded  by  the  laws  of  the  Church ; 


APPENDIX  313 

"Second,  that  it  is  of  such  a  nature  as  to  seriously  trouble  the  faith  of 
the  faithful  upon  the  fundamental  dogmas  of  the  Catholic  teaching,  not- 
ably concerning  the  authority  of  the  Scripture  and  of  tradition,  the 
Divinity  of  Christ  and  His  infallible  knowledge,  the  redemption  accom- 
plished by  His  death,  the  doctrines  of  the  resurrection,  the  Eucharist  and 
the  divine  institution  of  the  sovereign  pontificate  and  episcopate ; 

"We  reprobate  the  book  and  interdict  the  reading  of  it  by  the  clergy 
and  the  faithful  of  our  diocese. 

"Paris,  January  17,  1903 

"Francois  Cardinal  Richard, 

"Archbishop  of  Paris." 

The  Archbishop  of  Nancy  in  writing  of  the  method  of  Abbe  Loisy 
says  that  it  is  neither  Catholic,  nor  Christian,  nor  historical,  nor  critical, 
nor  theological,  nor  scientific,  nor  loyal. 

Note  7 

"The  masters  of  those  who  know,"  in  both  philosophy  and  science, 
fully  recognize  the  limitations  of  their  work,  and  also  recognize  the  mass 
of  rather  worthless  stuff  that  ofttimes  parades  itself  under  the  guise  of 
philosophy  or  of  science. 

For  a  frank  statement  to  this  effect  from  masters  in  science  I  refer 
to  the  Method  for  Promoting  Research  in  the  Exact  Sciences,  published 
in  the  Year  Book  of  the  Carnegie  Institution  of  Washington,  1904.  It 
contains  letters  from  six  distinguished  men  of  science  in  reply  to  a  letter 
of  Professor  Simon  Newcomb,  soliciting  opinions  as  to  the  best  method 
of  promoting  the  work  of  the  Carnegie  Institution  in  Research  Work. 
Dr.  Newcomb's  letter  itself  is  admirable.  I  give  only  a  quotation  from 
the  letter  of  Karl  Pearson,  of  the  University  College,  London,  England : 

"i.  I  agree  absolutely  with  Professor  Newcomb's  first  statement 
that  the  nineteenth  century  has  industriously  piled  together  a  vast  mass 
of  astronomical,  physical,  and  biological  data,  and  that  very  little  use  has 
hitherto  been  made  of  this  material.  The  reason  for  this  I  take  to  be 
that  a  man  of  mediocre  ability  can  observe  and  collect  facts,  but  it  takes 
the  exceptional  man  of*  great  logical  power  and  control  of  method  to 
draw  legitimate  conclusions  from  them. 

"2.  Differing  probably  from  Professor  Newcomb,  I  hold  that  at 
least  50  per  cent,  of  the  observations  made  and  the  data  collected  are 
worthless,  and  no  man,  however  able,  could  deduce  any  result  from  them 
at  all.  In  engineer's  language,  we  need  to  "scrap"  about  50  per  cent,  of 
the  products  of  nineteenth  century  science.    The  scientific  journals  teem 


314  APPENDIX 

with  papers  that  are  of  no  real  value  at  all.  They  record  observations 
which  cannot  be  made  of  service  by  any  one,  however  able,  because  they 
have  not  been  undertaken  with  a  due  regard  to  the  safeguards  which  a 
man  takes  who  makes  observations  with  the  view  of  testing  a  theory  of 
his  own.  In  other  cases  the  collector  or  observer  is  hopelessly  ignorant 
of  the  conditions  under  which  alone  accurate  work  can  be  done.  He 
'piles  up'  observations  and  data  because  he  sees  other  men  doing  it  and 
because  that  is  supposed  to  be  scientific  work." 


INDEX 


Absolute  personality,  216. 

Actuality,  89,  141;  actualities  treated  by 
historians,  88. 

A.  D.  and  B.  C,  300. 

Age:  the  unhistorical,  19;  of  criti- 
cism, 289. 

Alter  ego,  33- 

L'americanisme,  107. 

Analysis  of  one's  individuality,  23. 

Ancients:  we  are  the,  239. 

Anthropologists,  204. 

Antinomies,  5. 

Apologetics:  Preface,  252;  are  sec- 
ondary, 154. 

Apostles'  Creed,  12,  126;  of  Saba- 

tier,  Harnack  and  Loisy,  126. 

"Apostles  of  circumstance,"  162. 

Aristotle:  i,  7,  25,  33,  45,  181,  195,  199; 

's    theory    of    development,    181; 

's  theology,  188. 

"Ascensio  mentis  ad  Deum,"  294. 

Autheben,  18. 

Aurelius,  Marcus,  23. 

Authority:  4,   7,  28,  32,   131;  definition 

of  ,  6;  a  pedagogue,  7;  one 

supreme  personal  ,  7. 

Autonomy,  34. 

"Back    to    Jesus,"    65,    85;    "Back    to 

Kant,"    82;    "Back    to    the    Fathers," 

227. 
Bacon,  180. 
Bad     metaphysic:     of     some     men     of 

science,  20. 
Bain,  174. 
Believe:    /  believe    rests   upon    a    ive 

believe,  288. 
Bible,  the:   59,  268,  280;  critics  of  the 

.  74. 

,  the  "paper  Pope,"  12. 

Birthplace,  24. 

Boehme,  Jacob    Mystic,  296. 

Bossuet,  44. 


Biichner,  175. 
Buckle,  162. 
Buridan's  ass,  32. 

Cabanis,  175, 

Caesar,  '►aut aut  nullus,"  102. 

Calvin,  John,  36,  140. 

Caprice,  liberty  of,  33. 

Catechetical  period,  the,  267. 

"Catholic  faith,  the,"  261;  why  do  I  be- 
lieve   ?  262. 

Catholic  party,  the,  304  (Appendix). 

Catholic  philosophy,   155. 

Catholicism,  Roman:  Harnack's  view 
of,  71;  Sabatier's  view  of,  47!!. 

Catholics,  system  of,  59,  60;  liberal 
,   107. 

Causality,  the  category  of ,  1 70. 

Certitude,  253,  276. 

Character:  33;  relatively  char- 
acterized, 34. 

Chinese,  morality  of,  37;  education 
of,  38. 

Choice,  element  of,  28. 

Christ,  divinity  of,  18;  the  eternal 
Logos   and  the  historical  Christ,    105; 

the   personality   of   ,    241 ;    many 

portraits  of  ,  246. 

Christian  History,  Philosophy  of,  196. 

Christian  Mystics,  139. 

Christendom,  a  reunited ,  136. 

Christianity:  historical  transformations 
of,  49;  what  is  ?  a  belated  in- 
quiry,   58,   91;   in   its   primitive 

form,  80,  84;  primitive  and  modern 
,  the  bond  of  union,  107;  New- 
man's   idea    of    the    development    of 

,    108;    and   the   conception 

of  development,  80;  of  Sabatier 

and  Harnack,  75;  historical ,  81,  loo; 

its   own   interpretation,  gg. 

Christians,  liberal,  13. 


315 


3i6 


INDEX 


Church,    the:    — —    militant    and    

triumphant,  93 ;   the   growth  of  , 

114;  a  teacher,   128;  as  an 

objective  historical  fact,  220;  the  au- 
thority of  ,   129;   Catholic  creeds 

of .held  in  common  by  both  Roman- 
ists and  Protestants,  144;  the  Roman, 

147;  as  the  "terrestial  God"  jure 

divino,  139;  the  Roman  Catholic , 

139;  is  actual  Christianity,  141. 

Christological   development,   125. 

Comic  philosophy,  85. 

Commandment,  the  fifth  ,  132. 

Comprehension,  265. 

Compulsory  morality,  as  distinglished 
from  physical,  mechanical  compulsion, 
35- 

Comte,  152,  1 59,  Appendix,  Note  VI. 

Conception,  265. 

Confession:  a  personal.  137;  personal 

of  Sabatier,  50. 

"Confessions  of  faith,"  history  of , 

246. 

Conformist,   i,  46. 

Conformity,  6,  28. 

Conscience:    34;    of   a  good   man 

has  a  history,  34. 

Consciousness,  specifically  religious,  44. 

Conservatism,  37,  151. 

Conviction,  personal,  12,  28. 

Crab  cry,  79. 

Creed:  and  doctrine.  142,  144;  the 

oecumenical ,  241,  247; a  law 

of  liberty.  279;  creedal  claims.  101; 
creeds  have  a  history,  235;  credo, 
261. 

Criticism,  the  function  of,  249;  age  of 
,  289. 

Cult,  43,  116,  142,  145. 


Darwin,  179. 

Degenerates,  3. 

Deluge,  16. 

Development:     178,    184,    198;    is 

self-development,        141 ;       Aristotle's 

theory  of  ,  181. 

Dialectic,  38. 

Dicey,  Professor,  203. 

Dissent,  12. 

Divinity  of  Christ,  18. 

Duties,  25. 


Easter  message  and  Easter  faith,  68.  in. 

Ecclesiasticism,  218;  critical  ,  219. 

Eclaircissement,  10. 

Education,   7 ;  Greek  ideal  of ,  8. 

Emerson,  1,  2,  244. 

Empirical  school,  vice  of,  158. 

Empiricism,  challenged,  214. 

End:   chief  of  man,  31,   152,   153; 

chief  of  the  race,  81. 

Episcopate,  303    (Appendix). 

Erdmann,  29   (footnote). 

Esoteric  Buddhism,  86. 

Essence,  a  category  of  relativity,  88. 

Ethical  organisms,  25. 

Eucharist,  the,  146. 

Evolution:    166,    176;    mechanical   , 

i77>  185;  limits  of  ,  189;  miracle 

of ,  206. 


Faith,  6s,  257. 

Faribault  example,  226. 

Feuerbach,  120. 

Fifth   Commandment,  the,   132. 

Final  cause,  79. 

Finality,  as  lack  of  virility,  37. 

Freedom :  27,  28, ;  eighteenth  century 
form  of  ,  12;  elements  of  con- 
crete    ,    28;     etymological     sense 

of  ,  30;  in  bonds,  not  from 

bonds,  33. 

Friends,  the  Society  of,  227, 


Genesis,  of  the  good  man,  29. 

Genus,  real,  20. 

Gibbons,  Archbishop,  149. 

Giddings:    164. 

"Go  to  the  ape,  thou  man,"  and  "go  to 

the  man,  thou  beast,"  203. 
God,  as  nature,  260. 
God,  kingdom  of,  28,  67,  68,  in. 

God's  child:  everybody  is ,  35- 

God's  service,  various  forms  of,  45. 
Goethe,  11. 

Golden  age,  the, a  fiction,  202. 

Golden  past,  the,  210. 

Gospel,  the,  miraculous  element  of,  78, 

Greek  fathers,  81. 

Greek  philosophy,   106. 

Ground  vs.  Grounds,  254,  290. 


INDEX 


317 


ETabituation,  9. 

Harnack:   56,   57,  66,  85,  90,   107,   125, 

144;  thesis  of 70; '3  view  of 

Roman  Catholicism,  71. 

Hatch,  Edwin,  Professor,  209. 

Hecker,  Father,  149. 

Hedge,  Doctor,  148. 

Hegel,  18,  45,  211. 

Hell,  36. 

"Helping  idea,"  66. 

Heteronomy,  34. 

Higher  by  lower,  error,  of  explaining, 
21. 

Historical  Christianity,  100. 

Historical  method:  97,  161;  defined, 
158;  limitations  of,  193;  the  philo- 
sophical form  of,  197. 

History:  161;  rationality  of,  17;  Chris- 
tian   ,  philosophy  of,  96;  science 

of ,  163. 

Hobbes,  21. 

Holmes,  Dr.  O.  W.,  234. 

Holy  Communion,  43,  146. 

Hooker,  140,  143. 

Howison,  Professor  G.  H.,  10. 

Hume,  77. 

Huxley,  on  Hume  on  miracles,  77. 

Impedimenta:  218;  two  classes  of  , 

230. 

Incarnation:  259;  doctrine  of ,  106; 

of  the  Divine  Logos,  99. 

Indifferent  things,  30. 

Individual:  3,  19;  as  an  inde- 
pendent atom,  10;  right  of  private 
judgment  of  the  ,  12;  unique- 
ness  of   the    ,    23;    freedom   and 

rights  of  the  ,  27. 

Individualism,  abstract,  213. 

Individuality:  4;  uniqueness  of  — — , 
22;  analysis  of  one's  ,  23. 

Infallibility,  no  absolute  ,  127. 

Institutional  churches,   145. 

Institutions,  7. 

Ireland,  Archbishop,  149. 

James,  10. 

Jesus:   authority  of  dismissed  by 

Sabatier,  61;   the  historical  and 

Ritschlians,   64;    "Back  to  ,"  the 

cry  of  Ritschlians,  65,  85,  93;  per- 
sonal religion  of  ,  80,  92;  neces- 


sity of  the  interpretation  of  87; 

resurrection  of  ,  iii. 

Jesusolatry:  61;  Harnack  on 

Judgment,  private,  4. 

Jure    divino:    the    state    is 

theory  of  ,  216. 

Jurisprudence,   165,  204. 


67. 


139; 


Kant:    28    (footnote),    104,    162,    175; 

dualism  of ,  54;  "Back  to ," 

82. 
Kantian  agnosticism,  56. 
Keane,  Archbishop,  149. 
Kedney,     Rev.    Dr.     J.     Steinfort,    296 

(footnote). 
Kingdom  of  (jod,  28,  67,  68,  iii. 

La  Mettrie,  173. 

Laplace,  5. 

Leibnitz,  10. 

Liberal  Christians,  13. 

Libertas  arbitrii,  32. 

Lodge,  Sir  Oliver,  191. 

Logos:  132,  135;  Harnack  on,  70. 

Loisy:    47,   49,    108;   vs.    Sabatier, 

49;     's     "The     Gospel     and     the 

Church,"    condemned,    122;    on 

Romanism    and     Protestantism,     128; 

ecclesiastical    condemnation    of    , 

312   (Appendix). 

Lux  Mfindi,  135. 

Mach,  Ernst,  171  (footnote),  177. 

Man:   chief  end  of  ,  31,   152,   153; 

evolution  of  ,  38. 

"Mechanical  view"  of.  the  universe, 
Preface,  172. 

Men,  free  and  equal  by  nature?  31. 

Messiah,  the,  125. 

Metaphysic:  bad,  20;  of  scientific  men, 
190. 

Metaphysical  stage,  160;  metaphysical 
theories  of  exponents  of  science,  167; 
metaphysical  science,    174. 

Milton,  28. 

Miracles  of  the  Old  Testament,  no. 

Miraculous  element,  given  up  by  Har- 
nack and  others,  76;  of  the  Gos- 
pel, 78. 

Modern  science  and  culture  as  empir- 
ical as  religion,  153. 

Moral  organisms,  20. 


3i8 


INDEX 


Morality:  compulsory,  35;  standpoint 
transcended,  35,  39;  conventional 
,  educative  of  the  form  of  con- 
science, 36;  limitations  of  conven- 
tional — — ,  36; without  religion, 

42;  transformed  and  fulfilled  by 

religion,  43. 

Morals,  conventional,  relativity  of,  39. 

Mother-tongue  25. 

Mythology  scientific,   184. 

Neo-Kantianer,  104. 

Neo-Kantians,  65. 

Newman:  238;  's  idea  of  the  de- 
velopment of  Christianity,  108; 
's  tests,  109. 

Nicea,  council  of,  113;  the  Nicene  creed, 
247,  278. 

Non-conformists:  i; of  England,  3. 

Non-conformity,   dialectic  of:   39;  , 

function  of,  16,   17. 

Non-personal,  always  sub-personal,  258. 

O'Connell,  Rt.  Rev.  Mgr.,  149. 

Organisms:    195,    196;   ,  moral,  20; 

,  ethical,  25. 

Orthodoxy:  145,  243;  error  of,  54. 
Overcome  standpoints,  9. 

Pantheism:  298;  impersonal ,  178. 

Pathology,  moral,  40. 

Pearson,  171  (footnote);  Bishop  Pear- 
son's definition  of  belief,  282. 

Pedagogy,  8,  26. 

Personal  conviction,  12,  13. 

Persuasion,  35. 

Pessimistic  mood,  due  to  what?  212. 

Philosophy:    105,    173,    188,   292;    Greek 

,    106;    and   its    relation   to 

religion,  91;  Catholic ,  155;  prob- 
lem of  ,  173. 

Physicus,    103. 

Plato,  26,  27,  32,  307    (Appendix). 

Pluralistic  view  of  the  universe,  10. 

Plus,  the  element,  210. 

Policy  and  discipline,   142. 

Pope,  the,  130;  Pope  Leo  XIII,  131. 

Positivism,  a  twentieth  century  term, 
161. 

Positivists  in  sociology,  164. 

Potential,   185. 

Potentiality,  88. 


Pragmatism,  57. 

Prejudice,  4. 

Presbyterians,  137. 

Presence,  real,  43. 

Private  individual,  3. 

Private  judgment:  4,  13;  right  of  — — , 

5;  of  the  individual,  12;  as 

misjudgment,  4. 

Progress,  39. 

Protestantism:   12,  31,  133,  147;  ethical 

might  of  ,  14;  Saba  tier  on  , 

S3f  S8;  Loisy  on ,  128;  mis- 
represented by  Sabatier  and  Harnack, 
107. 

Protestant  churches:  on  the  continent, 
143;    of    America,    307     (Appendix); 

in   Germany,    133;    Catholicizing 

of  the  ,  134. 

Protestant  Episcopal  church,  144. 
Protestants:     13,     14,    54;     fundamental 

doctrines  of ,  13. 

Purgatorio,  36. 

Quakers,  137. 

Rationalism,  10. 

Rationality:  237;  of  history,  17. 

Reflection,  265, 
Revelation,  256. 
Rights,  25. 
Real  presence,  43. 

Reality,  degrees  of ,  141. 

Reason:   36;   age  of  ,   12;   abstract 

,  14- 

Reformers,  37. 

Reformation,  the,  6,   59. 

Relative  truth  of  the  twentieth  century, 

209. 
Relativity:    207;    of   the    relative, 

210. 
Religion:  40,  41,  100,  150,  152;  — —  and 

the  state,  47 ; as  willing,  283 ; of 

the    spirit,    155;    as    feeling,   264; 

as  knowing,  265 ;  ideal  of      ■    , 

41,   42;   transforms   and   fulfills 

morality,     43;     what    is    — ■ — ?    255; 

psychology  of  ,  90;  psychological 

forms  of ,  264;  reconciliations  of 

with  science,  102. 

Religious  certitude,  55. 
"Republic  The"  of  Plato,  26. 
Restoration,  a  revolution,  37. 


INDEX 


319 


Resurrection  of  Jesus,  iii. 
Reunion,  with  Rome,  14. 
Right  of  private  judgment,  5. 
Ritschlian  school:  56;  principles  of,  64; 

the   historical   Jesus   and   Ritschlians, 

64. 
Roman  church,  the,  147. 
Romanism  and  Protestantism:   136,  149, 

151;    errors  and   evils   of  ,    140; 

Loisy  on ,  128. 

Romanticism,  211. 

Rome:  the    church    of    the    American 

party  in ,  149;  the element,  283. 

Rousseau,  11,  15  (footnote). 

Sabatier:  47,  49,  85,  90,  107,  125;  per- 
sonal confession  of  ,  50;  on 

Protestantism,  53;  's  dismissal  of 

the  authority  of  Jesus  as  held  by 
Catholics  and  Protestants,  61. 

Salvation  Army,  238. 

Scepticism,  18. 

Schaff,  Dr.  247. 

Schiller,  10,  25. 

Schism,  26. 

Schleiermacher,  51. 

Schools,  scientific  and  philosophic,  167. 

Schopenhauer,  152. 

Science:    152,    167,   169,    170,    193,   213; 

problem    of    167;    ,    when 

bankrupt     intellectually,      190;    , 

when  hopelessly  bankrupt,   197;  

is  anti-teleological,  201. 

Self,  true,  33;  self-estrangement,  9; 
self-consciousness,     never     subjective, 

257- 
Seth,  Professor,  19. 
Sidgwick,   205,  207. 
Society,  21. 
Sophists,  33. 

Spalding,  Archbishop,  149. 
Spencer,  21,  152,  162,  202,  204. 
St.  Augustine,  34,  36. 


St.  Paul,  33,  36. 

Standpoints,  overcome,  9. 

State,  the:  educational  function  of , 

46;  is  jure  divino,   139;  welfare 

of ,  47;  and  religion,  47. 

Stoics,  the  cyclic  theory  of,  100. 

Suicide,  25. 

Summus   ego,   the,   29. 

Syllogism,  a  form  of  the  Logos,  formu> 
lated  by  Aristotle,  45. 

Taine,  163. 

Tarde,  22. 

Taylor,   181. 

Teleological  cause,  38. 

Teleology,   178. 

Theodicy,  a,  217. 

Theonomy,  34. 

Thesis,  the,  of  the  volume:  Preface. 

Tolstoi,  191. 

Trinity,  doctrine  of  the  holy  ,  297. 

Unhistorical  age,  the,  19. 

Unitarianism,  22"]. 

Universe,  pluralistic  view  of,  10. 

Von  Hartmann,  83,  85,  152. 

Ward,  163. 

Warfare,  between  religion  and  an  irre- 
ligious modern  culture,  155. 

Westminster  Catechism,  41. 
divines,  153. 

Whateley,  Archbishop,  304  (Appendix). 

Will,  formed,  33. 

"Yellow  peril,"  85. 

Zahm,  Professor,  149. 
Zeitgeist:   73,  99; 

ture,  140. 
Zeno:  183;  's  paradox,  157. 


of  modem  cul- 


Transitional   Eras  in  Thought 

With  Special  Reference  to  the  Present  Age 

By  A.  C.  ARMSTRONG,  Ph.D. 
Professor  of  Philosophy  in  Wesleyan  University 

Cloth     12mo     $2.00  net 

"Transitional  Eras  in  Thought"  is  a  study  of  the  critical  periods  of 
Western  culture,  with  a  view  to  determine  the  laws  which  condition 
them  and  the  bearing  of  the  conclusions  reached  on  the  thinking  of  the 
present  time.  The  eras  chiefly  discussed  are,  the  age  of  the  Sophists 
in  Greece;  the  Era  of  Transition  from  Mediaeval  to  Modern  Times;  the 
Eighteenth  Century;  and  the  Present  Age,  considered  as  forming  a 
parallel  to  these  earlier  epochs  and  yet  as  distinct  from  them.  After  an 
inquiry  into  the  nature  of  transitional  eras  in  general,  the  author  con- 
siders in  successive  chapters  the  influence  of  science,  history  and  social 
change  in  the  development  of  transitional  movements.  Then  he  takes 
up  the  question  of  the  appeal  from  thought  to  faith,  and  concludes  with 
an  analytic  appreciation  of  the  ways  in  which  ages  of  negative  culture 
pass  over  into  eras  of  positive  thought.  Throughout  the  argument 
emphasis  is  laid  on  the  union  of  constructive  with  destructive  forces  in 
eras  of  transition,  and  the  endeavor  is  made  to  utilize  the  results  of  the 
investigation  to  solve  present  problems  and  to  establish  principles  upon 
which  the  work  of  the  future  may  be  based. 


AN  INTRODUCTION  TO  SYSTEMATIC 
PHILOSOPHY 

By  "WALTER  T.  MARVIN,  Ph.D. 
Assistant  Professor  of  Philosophy  in  Western  Reserve  University 

Cloth     8vo     $3.00  net 
WHY  THE  MIND  HAS  A  BODY 

By  C.  A.  STRONG 
Professor  of  Psycholoey  in  Columbia  University 

Cloth     8vo     $2.50  net 
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64-66  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York 


The  Philosophy  of  Education 

Being  the  Foundations  of  Education  in  the  Related 
Natural  and  Mental  Sciences 

By  HERMAN  HARRELL  HORNE,  Ph.D. 

Assistant  Professor  of  Philosophy  and  Pedagogy  in  Dartmouth  College 

Cloth     12mo    $1.50  net 

"This  is  a  choice  book,  distinguished  both  by  breadth  and  depth  of  view.  Many 
guides  are  calling  'Lohere'  or  'Lo  there,'  and  diverse  opinions  prevail.  With  '  a  sym- 
pathetic and  bottom-seeking  mind,'  Professor  Home  aims  to  unify  and  clarify  educa- 
tional thought.  His  work  is  well  entitled;  it  is  concerned  with  the  unifying  principles; 
not  what  to  think  upon  educational  problems,  but  how,  is  its  quest.  At  the  same  time 
he  has  regard  to  practice  as  well  as  theory;  e.g.,  in  the  eleven  pages  devoted  to  the 
problerrof  athletics.  Education  is  here  presented  in  a  fivefold  view— biological,  physio- 
logical, sociological,  psychological,  philosophical.  All  education  is  self-education;  the 
teacher  can  only  instruct  and  direct;  the  pupil  must  educate  himself— that  is,  adjust 
himself  to  his  environment,"— 7%e  Outlook. 


THE  LIMITS  OF  EVOLUTION 
AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Illustrating  die  Metaphysical  Theory  of  Personal   Idealism 

By  G.  H.  HOWISON,  LL.D. 
Mills  Professor  of  Philosophy  in  the  University  of  California 

Cloth     12mo    $1.60  net 

Second  Edition,  Revised  and  Enlarged 

"The  book  is  a  remarkable  illustration  of  the  way  in  which  original  thought,  guided 
by  philosophical  and  theological  tradition,  can  produce  a  unique  result.  On  the  one 
hand.  Aristotle,  Leibnitz,  and  Kant,  on  the  other  the  theology  of  Christendom,  are  made 
to  contribute  to  the  production  of  a  well-articulated  system,  which  stands  in  striking 
contrast  with  the  prevailing  type  of  idealism.  As  a  protest  against  this  monistic  ideal- 
ism the  book  sounds  its  strongest  note.  Whether  the  reader  agrees  with  Professor 
Howisonor  not,  he  will  be  brought  to  see  in  a  clear  light  the  difficulties  which  beset 
current  idealism,  and  he  will  be  made  to  ask  himself  seriously  whether  these  difficulties 
can  be  overcome.  Professor  Howison  agrees  with  his  idealistic  opponents  in  the  view 
that  the  temporal  order  of  experience  is  intelligible  only  as  a  system  of  itemifor  eternal 
consciousness,  but  he  differs  from  them  in  maintaining  that  both  our  rational  and  our 
moral  experiences  postulate  an  indefinite  number  of  eternal  persons,  of  whom  God, 
himself  one  of  the  community,  is  the  final  cause.  All  together  the  book  is  a  most  note- 
worthy contribution  to  philosophical  thought." 

—Professor  E.  B.  McGilvary,  Cornell  Univtrsity, 

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